


The Wonderful Part of the Mess We Made

by Aproclivity



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: F/M, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Strand's gotta Strand, There's only One Bed!, alex's relationship with her mother is complicated, came for the green card stayed cos oops i love you, canon level poor decision making, danny reagan gives the most Canadian shovel talk, first kisses in public, fluffy as fuck, i love you you idiot, ot3: ruby carver/baseball bat/alex's knees, paul bae is the captain of the ss stragan, paul bae says stragan rights, richard loves her but he's gonna be an ass about it, richard strand is no where near as suave as he likes to think he is, someday these idiots will actually be open about their feelings and the world will end, someone finally calls strand on his shit because he needs it, strand is darcy in a horror movie, the proposal based fic you didn't know we needed, this is all strand's idea and yet he's still making internal noises that only dogs can hear, we're playing trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-11-24 04:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20901683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aproclivity/pseuds/Aproclivity
Summary: Alex doesn’t even know where to start. 1. She’s being fired. 2. She’s being deported. 3. Warren is likely the cause of both. 4. Richard Strand (Richard Strand!) just told her bosses that they’re in a relationship. 5. He said he loves her. And 6. They’re engaged. Honestly, this can’t be happening.  But it is.The Proposal inspired fic that you didn't know you needed.





	1. When they have been exhumed

**Author's Note:**

> Okay to start with this fic is definitely inspired by the film The Proposal staring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. It's definitely going to be lighthearted and fun! On a more serious note, ICE is the worst. I feel like I need to acknowledge that elephant in the room before going forward, because while the characters make light of it, the story is set in 2017 where it definitely isn't anywhere near as much of an issue as it is now.

“Would you stop looking at me like that? I didn’t do anything!” Alex just huffs, crossing her arms as she watches him. When he doesn’t reply, Alex just sighs and adds quickly. “This time.”

The ‘what the hell did you do now, _Alex?!_’ Look on Strand’s face doesn’t change as he peers at her from his side of her desk and over the rim of his glasses. It’s almost as if he hadn’t heard her, or the sigh that had gone along with the words. Then again, he was far better about ignoring her sighs than she was with his. “Seriously Richard,” Alex just continues. “I’ve been practically glued to your side for the last three weeks. I haven’t done anything that warrants some sort of meeting like this!”

“And yet,” Richard counters quickly in a mild voice that is definitely undermined by the continuation of the look that he’s giving her. “Paul and Terry both flew in for this meeting and Nic said that you should bring _me_.” Strand says the word as if he can’t quite believe it and it annoys the hell out of him too, which only causes Alex to shrug helplessly at him for a moment before he adds not at all helpfully: “And they want to do it in the conference room rather than here in your office. Do you know the only other time that they’ve asked for me to be in a meeting with them in the conference room, Alex?”

“No?” The question is asked uncertainty because honestly, Alex can’t remember a time when that was even a thing that happened. Even when her bosses were angry with her, they did it here in the privacy of her office (or Nic’s) and not some place with large glass windows that allowed the interns to be able to watch intensely. The fact that the interns could watch made it all the more surprising that Alex didn’t know what he was talking about--they loved to gossip to her about (most) things around the infamous Dr. Strand. 

“It was after you recorded me and Amalia and they were worried that I was going to sue the studio.” Alex just goes pale at that. She’d already been sent onto her vacation at that point and hadn’t even been aware that her bosses had deemed it important enough that they should have a meeting with Strand _without_ her. That stung more than a little bit. Perhaps noticing Alex’s discomfort, Richard continues on: “I assured them that I wouldn’t be suing _of course_ provided that you admitted on the podcast that you wouldn’t do it again. Which you did. But it still begs the question as to why they’ve requested this meeting _now._”

“Maybe Warren threatened to sue after he found out we got the tapes from CERN. I mean, he did threaten me the last time that I met with him.” Alex isn’t at all surprised by the look of amusement on Richard’s face at the mention of that meeting. She’d had a bet with Nic that Strand had done whatever his version of a fist pump was when he’d heard her sass their own personal version of a James Bond villain. (Which was honestly a thousand times better than calling him ‘sexy James Bond which Alex is fairly certain annoyed Richard more than a little bit every time he heard the man referred to as such on the show.) 

“I suppose that is a possibility but…” Whatever was going to follow the but that Richard spoke (and Alex had learned early on in their working relationship that like most philosophers everything important in what Richard said tended to follow the ‘but’) was lost as her phone chimed the alarm that Alex had set for the meeting so that the two of them didn’t become so engrossed in their work that they missed it. 

With a sigh, Alex just shuts it off and rises to her feet, grabbing both it and her notebook. For a moment she looks as if she wants to run out the door or barricade the two of them inside, but Richard stands as well, picking up his own leather portfolio. His voice is quiet and comforting when he speaks close to her ear, just given the lack of distance between the two. “You know Nicodemus would just come looking, Alex.”

“I know.” The words are sighed as she slips her phone into her pocket. “But I swear I really didn’t do anything stupid this time. I’ve been on my best journalist behavior.” Richard doesn’t reply, either to assure or condemn her and instead he just walks next to her, matching her slow execution pace as they head down the hall into the conference room. 

Terry, Paul and unsurprisingly Nic are all in there, and they’re seated and they look grave. Alex just pauses before Richard subtly bumps her elbow with his own for her to go in, and he shuts the door behind them. In true Alex Reagan fashion, she attempts to cut the tension with a bad joke. “Whatever it is.” She begins with a quick but flustered smile. “I didn’t do it.”

“Oh,” Terry begins. “We _know_ that you didn’t, Alex.” The flustered smile falls off her face as she just drops into the chair at the end of the table, and Richard takes his normal seat to her right. 

Paul just gives his friend and partner a look before he adds more kindly: “Alex do you remember when we talked about you not going to Turkey because your visa application was under review? But you went anyway?”

At her side Strand makes a sound below his breath that seems to entirely be made of ‘_I told you so._’ And Alex just glares at him quickly before she focuses back on Paul and Terry. 

“You know I had to. Simon wouldn’t have begged me to go if it wasn’t important. I mean and it _was important_. It’s how we got the Horn and the prophecy and everything that went along with it ...”

“Alex, we just got a call from our legal team, and from your immigration attorney. They’ve denied your visa application because you went.” Terry’s voice is soft too this time, as if it would make the blow lighter when it fell on her. But it didn’t, to Alex it felt like someone had punched her in the gut and she sagged back into the chair, her face going white below the heavy foundation she was wearing. Her eyes went wider when he added the next blow. “Alex, you’re being deported.”

“_What_?!” The question is barely breathed and it’s echoed in much stronger tones from Richard at her side. “They can’t be deporting me. I’m from _Vancouver_! It’s practically America! There’s got to be something that we can do!”

“We tried, Alex.” Paul takes over again. “But there was already a strike on your record from last year when your paperwork was late.” Everyone in the room knew why her paperwork was late, but no one wanted to put the words onto it. Alex was famous for late paperwork in general, and this particular paperwork had been due the day after her and Nic had discovered the body of Maddie Franks in her apartment. The next week of course had been taken up by dealing with the police and of course just _dealing_ with what they had found. 

Alex tries to push the vision of the woman’s body hanging from the extension cord from her mind as she just says softly. “Well, I mean it’s not ideal but you guys work from Vancouver. I can do my research from my parents house and my interviews via Skype. If I really need to then I can just ...”

Terry interjects again and he sighs softly. “No, Alex you can’t. If you’re being deported then with the money we get from the government we can’t have you on staff. They’ll pull our funding and we can’t function without it.”

For the first time, Richard speaks. “Surely there must be some way around that. The Institute could take over Alex’s main salary and you could just license her work from us.” Alex’s head whips quickly towards him because out of all of the people in the room who she knows would defend her, he is the person that she suspects the least of trying to pull her ass out of the fire. 

And of course it’s the other person in the room that she suspects the least who adds fuel to the flames. “It wouldn’t work.” Nic’s voice is flat. “We wouldn’t be able to do that with journalism ethics. People would just see it as us doing promoted work for you and the Institute. And it opens Alex up for things that working for us doesn’t. Warren could claim that she no longer qualifies as a journalist at that point, and he could really start going after her. And the studio.” 

“Is there any chance that Warren is behind this? I mean he did threaten me last time he saw me that if I didn’t stop then something…” Alex frowns, and she hates the paranoid note in her voice that comes along with that, but if there’s anyone who would have the influence for this, it _would_ be Thomas Warren. “Well, something bad would happen, and I think this qualifies, don’t you?” 

“Alex, it doesn’t matter if he pulled strings or not. It’s not like we’ve got a lot of options here. The only one you’ve got is if you go home voluntarily, wait a year and then reapply for your visa then.” 

“A year?” The word is spoken in triplicate from Alex, Richard and Nic all at once, but it’s Alex who continues. “A year? Paul, we’re dealing with possibly the _literal apocalypse_ here. Even if it’s something that you don’t personally believe in, the Order of the Ceonophus _does_ believe in it, and so does Warren. Whatever they’re doing, it’s escalating. We don’t have at least a year to just sit around and wait for bullshit bureaucratic red tape to untie us to work on this!”

“Alex, I don’t think the US Government cares about the apocalypse. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to do everything in their power to make it happen.” Paul’s words bring a ghost of a smile to Alex’s face but that’s the best that she’s able to manage. 

When she speaks, her voice is thicker than she’d like with the promise of tears that are going to come as soon as she’s managed to get into the lady’s room. “How long do I have? I mean, sure I’ve got time to find me a husband or a wife, right?” There it is, the final attempt at a bad joke that Alex has got inside of her right now, and it’s possibly the weakest one that she’s ever made and everyone knows it. Paul, Terry and Nic give spectral smiles of their own at her attempt. 

Strand doesn’t. And instead, he just says quickly. “Alex we have to tell them.” Three mouths drop open, and three heads swivel to stare at him, but before Alex can question him, he continues: “I realize that this situation is far from ideal and definitely not how you would have elected to tell them, but whatever concerns you may have for the integrity of the show isn't going to matter if we don’t have one. And I’d much rather have this out there than to hear you talk about marrying someone else, even jokingly. You know how jealous I can get, Alex.” 

“Yes.” Alex just echoes softly, because she’s looking confused and apprehensive. “I know. I mean…” No, she doesn’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about, but she does in fact know that, and has since there had been Tannis Braun and walking in the park. 

“Alex and I have been together since I’d returned from Italy. We were keeping it a secret for the sake of the show and out of my concern for her safety. I’d planned on officially asking her to marry me when this was over, and she’d planned on officially accepting my offer. I see no reason why we should keep up the pretense of our merely being friends when the cost of doing so could be losing her for an indeterminate period of time.” 

“You owe me a bottle of Yamazaki. The twelve year old one.” Paul just looks to Terry with a grin that he doesn’t even bother to deny. “And it’s not without merit. If the ICE gives us any problems all we need to do is to send them along the show.” 

“A show where Strand repeatedly says that he loves his wife very much,” Terry counters quickly, and he looks from Strand to Alex and then back again. “Can you even legally get married?” 

Richard just wraps himself in iron, pulling the strong armor of Dr. Strand around him as he fixes Terry with his coldest stare, and watches as the man flinches from it. He doesn’t bother to keep the censure or anger in his voice when he replies. “Do you honestly think that I am the sort of man who would propose to the woman I love if I was still legally married to someone else? Especially someone who _abandoned_ me. While I was in Italy, I had begun my divorce proceedings. They only came through last week. I was hoping to surprise Alex with the papers over dinner this evening. We had plans.” And the tone of voice leaves what Richard didn’t say entirely clear to the people in the room. ‘_And you ruined it, you asshole_.’ 

Alex is uncharacteristically silent as the men in the room keep talking around her. There’s no small part of her that is entirely wondering if she’s having some sort of stroke at the moment. In the last five minutes there’s just been too much information (or fake information) happening around her, and processing it seems like an impossible task. Honestly, Alex doesn’t even know where to start. 1. She’s being fired. 2. She’s being deported. 3. Warren is likely the cause of both. 4. Richard Strand just told her bosses that they’re in a relationship. 5. He said he loves her. And 6. They’re engaged. Honestly, this can’t be happening. 

But it is. 

“Okay. So. We’re gonna need to call legal and Alex needs to call her immigration attorney. Hopefully whoever is running your ICE appeal is a fan. It’d probably help cut a lot of corners if they listened to the show already. In the meantime we need to figure out how we’re going to approach this on the show. If nothing else, we’ve got loads of fanmail that we can send to ICE so that they know this is legit.” Paul is still grinning like an idiot and Alex feels vaguely sick. “Cheer up, Alex. At least it’s in the open now. I’m sure sneaking around was fun and all but you two don’t need to do it anymore.”

She puts on a thin smile while Strand rises to his feet next to her. “I should probably call my attorney as well. It can’t hurt to have an extra legal mind on this.” Especially considering there’s the possibility that it ends with them all in jail. 

But then Nic pipes up with something that puts the fear of something worse in her with a single question. “Alex have you told your mom yet?” Instead of opening her mouth to what she’s sure is going to be a large amount of vomit, Alex just shakes her head. “Well, this weekend is your parents 50th, right? You’re gonna be up there. You can tell her then.” And the look on his face underscores what he didn’t say: _and you can introduce him to them then_. 

“I was already planning on attending with Alex. This just gives us the chance to tell her parents about it in person then.” For once, Alex is grateful for the way that Richard can lie like the smoothness of his suits. It means that she doesn’t have to. 

“I should call her and remind her that you’re coming with me.” Her voice is small, far smaller than usual but at least this all coming out possibly explains that. Probably. Hopefully anyway. 

“I should be heading out anyway. I have a meeting before dinner. Six, yes?” Strand rises to his feet and looks to her questioningly and she wants to drag him back to her office in order to get answers from him, but considering the amount of yelling that the two of them are about to be doing, that’s probably not a good idea. Then, as if Alex wasn’t feeling weird enough, Richard bends down and presses a barely present there kiss at the corner of her mouth. She can feel it circling there, a brand of dry heat and her cheeks flushed crimson. “I’ll see you at home, darling.”

And then he’s gone leaving her with the three other men in her life all looking at her with various stages of shock on their faces. Trusting (perhaps faulty) that her legs are going to hold her when she stands, Alex scrambles to get up. “So, I’ve got some calls to make unless you want to yell at me some more first?” She manages to stand and grab her notebook before Terry waved her off. 

“We’ll talk about it Monday when you get back, Alex. I just really wish you had told us that this was going on.”

“Right. I’m sorry. I really am. I just…. didn’t think I guess. I’ll let you know what my lawyer says okay?” And then before they could protest any further, Alex just high tails it to her office, ignoring the gossiping gaggle of interns that have somehow managed to assemble just in time to see Richard kiss her and leave. Because that’s definitely what she needed right now. 

Getting back to her office, Alex just sinks into her chair and covers her face with her hands and groans. “What the hell is even happening right now?!”


	2. Ones we've inherited, ones that we learned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If such a thing were possible, and not entirely beyond the bounds of nature, Richard Strand would have simply been staring at his own treacherous mouth for the things that had dropped from it like a terrible echo of things that he’d never had any intention of telling Alex. And Ruby's Ot3 is her, her bat and Alex Reagan's kneecaps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's trope bingo without a fair bit of mutual pining? What's a Black Tapes fic without Strand Stranding it up everywhere?

_What the hell was going on right now?!_ Richard Strand doesn’t even have an answer. Or his briefcase. Or his coat. Honestly, he’s just relieved that his cellphone and car keys were in his suit jacket, because he doesn’t want to return to the offices and deal with the aftermath of what just happened. No, the aftermath of what he’d _caused_ to happen. He’d not been an innocent bystander as he was in so many of Alex’s other natural disasters--no, this time he’d been the one with the hand on the throttle as he steered the ship directly into the path of the hurricane without any regard for the seaworthiness of the vessel that the two of them were riding at present. 

Without saying anything, Strand just slammed his head into the steering wheel of his BMW with such force that the horn went off, scaring some poor woman who just happened to be walking to her car in the space across from his in the garage. There must have been something with his expression, because she didn’t even partake in the typical singled fingered Seattle Freeze salute. Well, at least that was one good thing, because honestly at the moment Dr. Richard Strand who always maintains (or attempts to maintain, anyway) an air of finassed calm certainly feels as if he’s about to fly apart at the seams. 

If such a thing were possible, and not entirely beyond the bounds of nature, Richard Strand would have simply been staring at his own treacherous mouth for the things that had dropped from it like a terrible echo of things that he’d never had any intention of telling Alex. At least until this was over. Entirely over. Until he could be certain that her safety from Warren and anyone else like him was absolute. And now here they were with this just out in the open air thanks to the interns and their frenzied snip chats or whatever the hell they. Despite Ruby’s apparently ruthless attempts to modernize his slang, Strand was far too old to ever make the attempt to understand some of the things that the interns were always on about. He still didn’t believe that his mouth had worked so much before his head managed to catch up with the problems with this entire thing. 

Problem one: Alex Reagan is his colleague. Problem two: she is younger than his daughter by a socially unacceptable margin. Problem three: Richard Strand is not a good man. Alex may believe that he is, but Richard knows himself and is aware of all the ways in which he isn’t particularly when it comes to the woman that he’d announced to the world (or what may as well have been the world) that he loves her. That they’re together despite never having heard one way or another if Alex reciprocates his feelings. Yes, there have been moments when he’s caught her _looking_ but Alex likes good looking people. 

_Like Thomas Warren_, his mind offers treacherously. _Like Tannis Braun, like Amalia_…. Richard stops his brain before he can go too far down the rabbit hole of jealousy that thinking about the things that she’s said on the podcast. Doing so isn’t at all conducive to attempting to reconcile what he’s done with the reality of the circumstances at present. He’s proposed to Alex Reagan in the most roundabout way possible and he knows that she has no choice but to accept. For someone who has always had their choices limited in his life (by his father, by Coralee, by Warren’s manipulations) here he was manipulating her _again_. He doesn’t like it. 

Yes, Richard Strand isn’t a good man. No, he is not going to rescind his offer. The thought of losing Alex (and her smiles, and her bad jokes, and the way that she bullies him into taking care of himself and the way she bites her lower lip when she’s focused on something. And the way that she puts the most tentatively gentle hand on his arm when he’s discussing something difficult with her…) No, the thought of losing Alex Reagan is unconscionable and he’s not going to take it back. 

With that decision made, Strand puts his phone into holder for it on the dash and presses the start button on his car. His voice doesn’t even shake when he commands his phone to “call Ruby.” There, the trappings of his armor are in full effect in his voice at least. Bonus points to him. (Now if only his hands would stop shaking and his heart would stop pounding in his chest. He’s too damned old for this.)

When Ruby answers on the third ring, she sounds slightly out of breath. “You okay, boss man? It’s not like you to call in the middle of the day.” Ruby is absolutely right and it _isn’t_ but today isn’t a normal day. 

He’s proposed to Alex Reagan. His heart is breaking. He’s not going to take it back. 

Without answering her question, and fully in Dr. Strand mode, he just starts with what he needs her to do. “Ruby I need you to book a hotel in Vancouver for this weekend. A suite. One bedroom but with a pull out sofa.” There, in case immigration decided to check on the trip, there would be plausible deniability. But he quickly adds: “definitely not the Empress. Something more outside of town. And I need you to put in an urgent call to Markus and inform him that I need him to call me immediately.”

“Markus?” Markus was Richard’s personal lawyer, and not the team that they used for Strand Institute business. The last time that he had used Markus was for having his divorce papers from Coralee drawn up. He wasn’t at all certain where his wife (‘ex-wife he hears Alex’s voice in his head and needs to push it away before he can think on it) was or how she had heard that he’d wanted to file papers, but they’d been delivered to his father’s house in Seattle signed and notarized, along with the rings that he’d placed on her fingers twenty years ago. He was planning on melting them down for scrap. There was no note, and he didn’t expect there to be one. For all her talk about their marriage not being fake, it had certainly ended that way. 

Not that he was bitter about that too. 

“Yes, Markus. And cancel any appointments that I have for the next week. Reschedule them but if the people aren’t available then just cancel.”

“All of them? You’re supposed to be meeting with…”

Strand just cuts his assistant off quickly. “Yes, Ruby. All of them. If they don’t work on a different time table then I don’t need to meet with them, it’s as simple as that. I’m going to be indisposed for the foreseeable weeks.” And, he adds in his head, _hopefully not in jail again_. 

“Do you want me to call Nic and cancel things there too?”

His response is immediate. “Do not call Nicodemus, Ruby.” Which was of course exactly the wrong thing to say to her. 

Ruby doesn’t keep her suspicions from her voice. “What did Alex do now? Boss if I have to deal with…”

“Alex didn’t do anything. We’re not fighting.” Yet, anyway but he doesn’t bother to stop the impatient defensiveness in his tone. “This is something of a personal nature, Ruby.”

“You’re not shutting me out like you did with _her_ did you? You promised that you wouldn’t!” Ruby never says Coralee’s name to him if she can help it, but Richard definitely knows which woman in his life she’s referring too. When Ruby is angry with Alex (and she’s often angry with Alex even when Strand himself is not even though he probably should be) she calls her ‘Reagan’. He’s bracing for that now. 

“Ruby this has nothing to do with my wife. Ex-wife.” He amends quickly. “And because I’m certain that you’re going to hear it from Nic, I should be the one to tell you: Alex and I are engaged.” It is entirely too awkward to say aloud for the second time. Even more awkward is the sensation of rightness that saying such inspires within his chest. 

The news is met with the unmistakable sound of a spit take on Ruby’s end and she offers an astounded “_what?!_” Between wracking coughs. 

“Alex and I are engaged.” He says for the third time, his voice deceptively calm. “The trip is so that I can meet her parents and we can inform them of our engagement.”

It takes a minute for the coughing on the other end of the phone to cease, and he can feel Ruby’s shrewd question even before she makes it. “You’re engaged but you want a suite with a pullout couch? Sorry, Dr. Strand I’m calling bullshit. What’s really going on?!” 

Giving an extended version what Alex has deemed to his face on more than one occasion, ‘The Doctor Strand Sigh of Annoyance’ he just admits it softly. “Alex’s visa has been denied, she’s being deported.”

As expected Ruby’s anger is instant and explosive: “so she’s making you marry her for a fucking green card?! That’s it. I’m coming out there and I’m bringing my bat. First she just blunders in here and breaks you and now she’s getting you to marry her so she can dig even more into your personal shit?! Hell no she isn’t!” 

It’s only on the third use of her name that Richard can break into her tirade. “Ruby, it was my idea! She didn’t have anything to do with my asking!”

“Have you _lost your mind._ This is _Alex Reagan_ we’re talking about here. I know you like her but really?! Marrying her?! She already doesn’t have any sense of personal boundaries. Can you imagine what she’s going to be like when she’s living with you?”

Richard just goes pale in his car. _Living with him_. Too quickly and too easily images come to his mind that are far too tantalizing for him to qualify. Alex brushing her teeth in his bathroom wearing nothing but _his_ pajama shirt, sex tousled hair and that grin she gets sometimes where the line between their professional flirting and the personal becomes too blurred. Alex bringing him a drink and kissing his forehead when it’s late and the words on the page he was reading stop making any semblance of sense and she tells him to come to bed. Alex _in his bed_ wearing nothing but his sheet and a post-colital blush….

None of these are unfamiliar daydreams that he’s had about her. None of these are unfamiliar thoughts and all of them make him groan softly. 

It’s a groan the Ruby misinterprets _entirely_. “See. It’s a bad idea. You can still get out of it, boss. I’ll call Nic and tell him that it’s off. Alex can find another way to dig herself out of this mess, she’s crafty and…”

“_Don’t_.” The word is breathed through grit teeth. “Even think about doing that, Ruby. I will not lose Alex. I’m going to marry her and if you do anything of the sort, I’ll fire you.”

In the seven years that Ruby Carver has been Richard Strand’s personal assistant he’d never threatened that before. Even when she’s fucked up (and she definitely has in the past) that has never been something he’s said to her. From the silence that seems to stress vastly between them, _both_ of them are surprised by his threat. Finally she just asks softly: “Are you really sure about this, Dr. Strand?” 

Is Strand sure of this? He doesn’t know. Certainty has always been his enemy when it comes to Alex Reagan. Each time (starting from the beginning of when he’d accepted her interview request) he’d thought that he’d discovered some semblance of certainty with her, she’d done something to rip it away. Or _he_ had, with his tendency to destroy everything good in his life. But there is one thing that he’s certain of _himself_ about. “I won’t lose her, Ruby. Not because of some bureaucratic bullshit thing. Call Markus. Book the hotel. Do not call anyone else about this. I’ll talk to you when we get back.” 

“I just hope you know what you’re doing, boss.” 

Ruby just chooses to ignore the sighed “me too” that comes from her boss as he hangs up the phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life.


	3. You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Richard meet to go over the plan, the immigration questionnaire and attempt figure out how they are going to handle the actuality of their situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your response so far! I'm really glad you guys are liking this as much as I am! There is some minor angst in this chapter because these two idiots can't ever actually have an honest conversation about their feelings. But I am definitely promising a happy ever after! 
> 
> Also Strand is no where near as fucking suave as he thinks he is.

Somehow Alex manages to make it through the day without having either Nic or a gaggle of interns coming streaming through her door. Oh, she’s well aware of the fact that her ‘secret’ is out (apparently the interns forgot to use the separate group text that she isn’t in to discuss the fact that Kayla had won the betting pool for a truly impressive amount of money going back through three years of interns) but no one’s come in to question her. Honestly, Alex should be grateful for whatever the hell Terry said to make them leave her alone for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that she really has no idea how to answer _any_ of them. Especially not her own. 

Just why the hell was Richard pulling her ass out of the fire anyway? Despite how she downplays things on the show in the role of layman to get the people around her to explain the things they’re talking about, Alex Reagan isn’t an idiot. There’s a lot of things that she is that she’s aware of: too impulsive, too lacking in self preservation, in possession of far too flexible of a moral code but being stupid isn’t one of them. Alex is well aware of the fact that she’s too fond of Strand, that there have barely been any real boundaries between them, that thinking about having sex with your interview subject on his desk within five minutes of actually meeting him is really a violation of her journalism ethics…

But Alex’s brain keeps drawing her back to two separate and conflicting points. The first one of which is what she’d said at the beginning of this season. The words ‘maybe just maybe, he gets his wife, Coralee back.’ Had been absurdly hard for her to speak. They kept getting stuck in her chest and then her throat as if her heart was attempting to reject them outright. But it’s what Alex had thought that he’d wanted, and what she wanted was for him to be happy. What she _wants_ is for Richard to be happy even if it’s not with her. And no she’s never going to tell anyone that the amount of takes that it took her to get through those words was even more than it was for her to get through that damn meundies commercial and Terry’s fanfic idea put together. But at least she’d been alone in the studio when Alex had recorded the narration. There were at least some benefits to her lack of a sleep schedule. 

The second point is probably far more subjective and Alex is well aware of the fact that she might be entirely experiencing apophenia around it. But there are points where Alex Reagan is pretty sure that Richard Strand is _looking_ at her. Like really looking. Moments when he thinks she won’t notice like when they’re working at the desk that should be hers but she’s cleaned half off for him. Or when she’s driving and can feel him watching her from the corner of his eye. Or nights when they’re watching the tapes. Well, she watches the tapes anyway. More and more Alex has been thinking that while _she_ watches the tapes, he’s watching _her_. Of course she’d rationalized it as him watching her _reaction_ to the tapes but. 

There are a hell of a lot of buts right now. Too many to think of. 

When Alex called her lawyer, she had borrowed another trick that she’d learned from Richard: the ability to speak in hypotheticals. Hypotheticals like ‘if someone in my life is a citizen and he offered to marry me what would it entail?’ Thankfully Lauren was well versed in those sort of hypotheticals and after warning about the penalties of getting involved with that (jail, way more money in fines than she’d ever have and permanent banning from the US) she also sent along a file of the sort of questions that they were going to ask both her and Richard for the immigration interview. 

More hypotheticals had come in Lauren’s explanations of how it might work, what might come into play and how it might work for her (that being a pretty white appearing woman from Canada with a modest pop culture success was a boon in a lot of ways) and how it might not work (her and Richard working together on an important story, Alex’s known obsession with said story, Strand’s marriage and well documented love for his wife, and the age gap between them). But they told Alex that if she wanted to go ahead with it, they’d file the paperwork but sooner was going to be better. 

Alex gave her the go ahead. After all what was one more poor decision in a lifetime of poor decisions? 

For the first time in a long while (maybe since their first interview) Alex actually shows up early to Richard’s father’s house. Normally when one of them says a time Alex tends to run somewhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour late. Today she’s here at quarter to six. As is also habit, Alex just lets herself in with the key that Richard had given to her with the caveat that she not snoop ‘too much.’ Alex had accepted that condition of his, after all she’d already done most of her snooping before he’d gone to Italy in the first place. 

She wasn’t her best during season two and Alex knows that. Still, balancing the chocolate pumpkin torte from the bougie bakery that Alex knows that he loves, along with her coffee (Richard always prefers his own tea how he makes it if he can get it. It’s one of the reasons that Alex’s coffee drawer has been overrun with his absurd collection of teas) and his briefcase and jacket, she comes into the foyer. Starting to toe herself out of her ballerina flats, Alex just pauses when she can hear the sharp tones of Richard’s ‘do not even think of being an idiot’ voice to whomever he’s speaking to on the phone. That’s not new, because he’s Richard, but it’s the words that he’s saying that surprise her. 

“I don’t give a damn, Markus. I’m doing this. She wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for me and my family. I’m not going to just leave her entire life to be destroyed because I made the mistake of returning her eleven phone calls. Get the paperwork filed!”

_Oh_. Something twists up inside of Alex’s chest that she doesn’t want to identify. It’s not something that’s _exactly new_ when it comes to the two of them but it still hurts. He’s doing this out of pity. He’s doing this because he feels guilty for getting her involved. Richard’s doing this out of obligation and it stings enough that she considers waking out of the house and home. Possibly to Canada even if she needs to. Alex is about to set the box and his things down and walk away when he greets her. She hadn't even heard him come in. While her back is to him, and Alex takes the second to try and pick up her fallen face. 

“Ah. Alex you’re early. Good. Perhaps a sign of an impossible apocalypse but good.” Alex can’t help but wonder when he became the one to make jokes in terrible situations but she does appreciate it because it gives her a chance to laugh, and that fixes her face more as she turns around. “Is that a bag from Pappion?” 

“Yeah. I couldn’t just sit at the studio anymore. I don’t know what Terry said to them but Nic and the interns have been avoiding me like the plague. Or alternatively they took their thousand dollar winnings and cut out to get wasted.” Alex didn’t blame them. She kinda wants to get wasted too. “But I swung by there and got you the torte that you like.” Hefting the bag up she just starts towards him and the kitchen. 

“Thousand dollar winnings?” The confused tone in Strand’s voice matches his face and Alex just shrugs. 

“Apparently three years of interns have had a betting pool since the third episode on whether or not we were in a relationship. Now they think they have an official answer.” Alex can’t keep the quiet sigh from her voice with that and she just heads into the kitchen without giving him a chance to respond. 

In many ways, the kitchen at the Strand house has been an unofficial base of operations since Richard returned from seeing Charlie. They watch tapes in the living room of course, on oppositional ends of the sofa with the recorder and their notepads between them. There’s Richard’s office, but she knows that he’s still pretending that he doesn’t have a conspiracy wall ongoing in there so they tend to work at the table in the kitchen or in her office. Him cooking for her in the kitchen is just a bonus really. 

Dropping into her normal chair Alex cuts him off before he can talk. “I know you’re trying to save my ass, Richard and I appreciate it. I really do. But are you sure about this? I mean even if it doesn’t work you’re still gonna be tied to me for the rest of your life. I think you’re going to get sick of me poking my nose into your life eventually. Especially once we stop whatever Warren’s trying to do.”

For a long moment after that, Strand doesn’t speak, but he does sit in front of his tea mug. A tea mug that she’s willing to bet anything has been cold for a long time. He’s as bad about letting it happen with his tea as Alex is with her coffee. Without looking at her, Richard just says her name and then stops before he continues again. “Alex no one knows that marriages can be finite more than I do. Just because two people marry for any multitude of reasons doesn’t mean that they’re going to stay married. A piece of paper, a _relationship_ even is no guarantee of some sort of deeper and lasting happiness. We already have a deep…”

“Partnership.” Alex says quickly before he can give it another name, and she continues just as rapidly: “I know. But Richard I don’t want to be another Coralee situation for you. I don’t want you to feel like…” Whatever she’s going to say is cut off my Richard’s interruption and a curt gesture. 

“Alex, If there is certainly one thing that you’re not, it’s Coralee.” Which is something that Alex knows. It’s something she’s _known_ for three years. She doesn’t know why despite knowing it, his words still hurt and she needs to tamp very strongly down on the urge to bite back and send them flying to separate corners for one of their patented Strand/Reagan fights where they don’t talk for a week and then come back with a tape and coffee or tea and new information. It’s a familiar pattern that they’ve been trying to break since she got back from Turkey. They especially need not to be doing that now. 

“What I mean to say, Alex is that you aren’t setting out to do this to trap me. You’re not acting on the orders of an outside source in order to keep me close.” He doesn’t say ‘like she did.’ He doesn’t have to say it when her name is in the air like a cloud of smog. 

But it lets the pressure of anger in her chest slowly deflate before she offers: “only the US government I guess.”

“Well, I suppose we know the state of American politics right now. So at least it’s not a surprise.” Alex laughs and he just gives her that half-wry smile that he sometimes does when he makes a bad joke of his own. They’re such nerds sometimes. And that’s how she likes it. “But yes Alex, I am certain I wish to stand by my offer.” And then he clears his throat and breaks their eye contact. “That is to say if you still want to. I know I didn’t give you very much of. Uh. Of a choice in there. And no one knows what that’s like more than I do.” Alex doesn’t think that Richard means it to sound as bitter as it does, but she doesn’t blame him for it either. 

It’s not as if she’s not bitter towards Howard and Coralee herself. 

“I’m sorry for that.” He does in fact sound sorry for it and Alex just blinks in response. The times that she’s gotten an actual apology from Strand can be counted on one hand without the use of all of her fingers. It’s a surprise and for a moment Alex doesn’t know what to say in response to it. The idea that he’s doing this out of pity rises in her again and Alex just swallows her words with a long sip of her cooling coffee. “But I’m going to stand by my decision. I’ve already spoken with my attorney about it, and had Ruby make reservations for a hotel suite in Vancouver with a pullout sofa. I’ll take the sofa of course…”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Richard. I’m the one who’s dragging you up there. I’ll take the sofa. It’s the least I can do considering everything you’re doing for me.” Despite seeing that he’s opening his mouth to protest, Alex just changes the subject once more. “I spoke to my immigration lawyer and told her to start the appeal paperwork. We’re going to have a meeting when we get back on Tuesday. She sent along a copy of an example questionnaire that they’re going to give us to make sure that…”

“That we’re not doing what we’re doing.” Strand concludes, because of course that would be the reason for it. “Markus was going to fax me one as well.” This time he ignores the upturn in _her_ lips at the reminder that yes, he actually personally owns a working fax machine in his office. “I can’t imagine that the questionnaire is going to be that difficult considering we’ve known one another for three years.”

“Well, considering I could write a dissertation on you…” Alex’s grin is back and Richard just pauses for a moment. “Maybe we should start with the questions about me. I haven’t really had a chance to look at it yet though.” Pulling the stack of paper from her messenger bag, Alex just sets it between them. This too is a familiar work pattern with Richard’s ability to read upside down and Alex’s penchant for reflexively reading things aloud for the show even if they don’t get used. 

However, the first question gives both of them a pause and they exchange a look. _What is your partner’s sleeping orientation?_ Oh, Alex knew that the details would be personal but she’d expected, wrongly apparently that they would start with something more simple like what the other’s favorite color was. Maybe she’s being naive but that’s what she was hoping anyway and Alex can’t help the way that she goes crimson from her roots to the color of her button up. 

“Can I offer you a drink?” Without even waiting for her response, Richard moves to the cabinet where he keeps his good bourbon and his glasses in the kitchen rather than the decanter in the living room. Pouring a generous amount in each glass, he sets one in front of her quickly. 

Funny how she never really drank bourbon until she started spending her nights with him. 

Taking a sip of the liquor without ice, Alex just grimaces and looks around at everything but the questionnaire between them. “Maybe this should be a conversation we have in the living room.” The suggestion is far more than that as she picks up the glass, questionnaire and the bag from Pappion all in one hand. Without saying anything else, Alex just goes to the silver drawer and grabs forks without thinking about it for a moment. Then it sinks in: _I know where Richard keeps almost everything in his house including how he files his father’s paperwork and where the good toothpaste and extra towels are._ She can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad considering Alex had dated her last partner for three months and didn’t have that level of intimacy with her. 

Grabbing his own glass and making a stop for a spare one that he fills with ice from the refrigerator door, Richard just follows Alex into the living room, topping her glass off with the ice he’d gathered without saying anything about it. Sitting in their respective corners of the sofa, both of them just took a long drink before Richard responded to the question on the list. “I sleep on the right. But I’m a sprawler. I tend to move around a lot in the night. I’m also apparently a blanket hog. And I snore.”

Well, if Richard is going to go first, it’s the least that Alex can do to respond. “I sleep on the left. Away from the door but close to the window if I can. I like a cold room for sleeping and I sleep bundled up in blankets on my back. I obviously talk in my sleep sometimes too.” Because Alex knows that he’s listened to the show (while she was in Turkey. Alex’s talked herself out of thinking it was because he’d missed her far too much for it being healthy. But she still kind of thinks so.) and that would have been something that he’s heard. 

“Well,” Richard says after a moment and another sip of his bourbon. “At least our faux marriage bed will probably only promise the struggles over our blankets.” His tone is entirely deadpan, but Alex knows when he’s making a joke by now, and this is one that causes her to laugh softly. It feels good to laugh considering how bad this day has been so far. When Alex laughs, the corners of Richard’s lips turn upward in response before he looks to the questionnaire again. “Well, at least we know the answer to this one: what does your fiance do for a living? So onto something that we don’t know about one another.” 

“Do you think that if we told the interview that our jobs were being pains in the ass for a living they’d agree?” 

Without meaning to, Richard gives the laugh that Alex has counted as _hers_ now for years. “I highly doubt that the US government is in the habit of having a sense of humor, Alex. Even if what you say is true.”

Giving him a grin that is nothing if unabashed Alex just shrugs as says, “I suppose. Okay. Next question we don’t know about one another. Yearly salary? I probably make about 56k a year.” 

“Between a hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand depending on speaking engagements and book sales but most of it simply goes back to the Institute. I pay Ruby’s salary from my own and Chicago isn’t an inexpensive city by any stretch.” As he looks mildly uncomfortable Alex just shrugs. 

“So not marrying you to be a sugar daddy. That’s probably good.” Richard’s hand tightens on the glass and he just takes a long sip and looks away quickly. “Sorry,” comes immediately followed by “bad joke. My lawyer mentioned them raising it as a possibility.”

His brow arches as if he can’t quite believe it and when he says “_oh_?” Alex knows the loaded syllable for the question that it is. 

“Because I’m attractive. Not… not that you aren’t of course. For someone your age you definitely look really good but…” Is Alex coloring again? Definitely. Is she taking a very long sip of her bourbon around that embarrassing statement? For sure. 

“I am hardly that old, Alex.” The reprimand is in Richard’s voice and she knows that he’s vain about his looks, which is one of the reasons he wears what he wears and spends so often on the ancient rowing machine in Howard’s basement. “It’s not as if I’m _decrepit_.” He adds, a bit of a whine seeping into his tone. 

“Yes yes I know. And I’m not saying you are! I’m just saying that Lauren raised it as a possibility.” And then eager to change the subject, Alex’s finger lands on a random question and she really wishes that it didn’t. Especially when he reads it aloud. 

“_Does your partner have any tattoos_? Well that’s easy. No.” 

Before he can move onto another question, Alex just shakes her head. “That’s not true. I have one.” When he just stares at her, Alex adds: “it’s a quill. And feathers. Sort of. It kind of dissolves into birds.”

For a moment there’s silence and then Richard just asks softly: “may I?”

Taken back Alex just nods. “Sure. Of course.” It’s like a reflex as she starts taking off her blazer. Her cheeks don’t feel as if they could have been any more crimson than before but somehow the heat has shifted as she pulls up the side of her silky blouse and shows him the tattoo that crosses her left ribs. Rationalizing that her bra is covering her breast (even if it’s lacy and lavender) Alex tilts to one side to show him the ornate feathered quill that the wispy top of turns into a flock of black birds flying away. Almost without thinking about it, Richard’s hand extends, but it doesn’t touch her skin and instead glide through the air above it. 

Neither of them speak for a moment before Strand just breathes “tell me about it.”

It’s not a question and Alex still keeps holding her shirt up almost like she’s under a spell. “I got it when I graduated from high school. My mom doesn’t know because she’d definitely murder me. But the quill was based on the logo for my high school paper. It was kinda where I got my start as a journalist. I worked on a story about a coach who was having an affair with a student and got him fired and made the school board investigate how the school treated accusations made by students against teachers. The birds are for my grandfather on my dad’s side. He died when I was twelve. We were really close. He used to call me his little magpie because I was always so curious.”

Richard just laughs again before he pulls his hand back as if the air above Alex’s skin could somehow vaporize it. “Well, I suppose it’s not something that I’m unfamiliar with when it comes to you, Ms. Reagan.”

Letting down her shirt, it’s entirely instinct for Alex to reply: “and yet here we are, Dr. Strand.” It’s the line between personal and professional flirting and Alex knows it but she doesn’t take it back even when he clears his throat and gets up to refill his glass. 

Bringing back the decanter, he sets it on the table in front of them. “Yes. Well. So tell me about what this weekend is going to entail, Alex.”

Relieved by the distraction Alex just takes another sip of her bourbon before she responds, but it’s a small one. She’s still got to drive home and pack. “Like Nic said, it’s my parents fiftieth wedding anniversary. My aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff will going to be there. There’s a family dinner tomorrow night where they’re going to be. We’re probably going to be a rowdy bunch.” There’s an apology in her tone that she can tell Richard doesn’t like but she continues on anyway. “The party itself is Saturday night. It’s kind of a semi formal affair. I’ve been planning it with my aunt Rita long distance for months. I was kind of hoping to get up there earlish tomorrow so that I can check in on stuff that I didn’t get a chance to before. I need to hit the hall and the bakery and pick up the napkins and decorations at the party store. Saturday during the day I’m planning on going and setting things up. Sunday is going to be church which don’t worry you’re not going to need to attend. I already told my mom that you won’t. Then a family dinner which is actually lunch because it’s at two. My mom and aunts will be cooking for that. Be prepared for a _lot_ of casseroles. I was planning on heading back on Monday afternoon but we can leave sooner if you need too. I just haven’t been up there in a while.” _Since you’ve gotten back from Italy_ goes unspoken Alex knows, but it’s clear that he’s heard it. 

“Leaving early tomorrow will be fine. I can be at your apartment before dawn if necessary. Beat some of the traffic up there. It might be best if we avoid the ferry just given what happened last time.” And then he adds, curiously, almost as if he can’t help himself. “What did your mother say when you told her you were bringing me?”

“She was…” Alex pauses, clearly searching for the right words as she recalls the conversation. 

_‘You’re bringing someone home, Alexandra? It must be serious. Why haven’t I heard of him before? I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard on getting married or invited Tim’s niece if I had known that you were going to have a date!’_

_‘Mom you_ promised _that you weren’t going to try and set me up with anyone anymore!’_

_‘Your father and I aren’t getting any younger, Alex. We want you to be settled before we’re too old for your wedding!’_

Alex just shakes her head to clear the memory before she replies. “She was surprised. Pleased I think. Told me that if she’d known I was dating someone she wouldn’t have complained about my lack of ring for so long.”

“Does she know it’s _me_?” From the tone, it’s clear to Alex that Richard’s expecting some push back from her parents on her choice of partner. He’s not wrong—she’s expecting it too. 

“I said it was someone I knew from work. My mom doesn’t listen to the show. She says it gives her anxiety and that she’d already dealt with enough of that when my dad was on the force. I assume she told him too. He was fishing when I called.” A pause before she adds: “I’m an adult and I make my own choices. The two of them can deal with it. We’re doing this so…”

“Yes,” Richard agrees, and Alex can’t help but wonder if he’s second guessing it. “We are. So, what’s next on the list?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life!


	4. We pick ourselves undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard and Alex start to head up to Vancouver, they go over more of the questionnaire and Richard gives Alex a ring and a bold face lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad so many folks are liking this! You may have noticed that the chapter count has gone up! Yeah, it's a bit of more of a beast than I planned for, but I definitely am not stopping writing this! I've got a whole other chapter and a half ready to go! This is gonna be a slow burn (as much as three years of these fucking idiots can be a slow burn) and there are so many tropes yet to come.

It’s five seventeen when Richard parks his car outside of Alex’s apartment building and gets out of the car into the crisp fall air. If he were the sort of man who believed in miracles, perhaps he would have ascribed the phenomenon to the fact that when Alex actually comes out of her front door carrying a suitcase, and a garment bag in addition to her normal paraphernalia at five twenty one according to his watch. Despite the skillfully applied artifice that is the makeup that Alex has applied (something that she’d only started to do once she’d become involved in him and her insomnia had gotten so bad—something he can’t help but to feel guilty for ) Richard can tell that her sleep was no better than his own had been though he doubted it was for the same reasons. 

After Alex had left, Richard had taken the bottle of bourbon to bed with him. It was an early night for the two of them considering how late Alex had been staying since her return from Turkey but given how they both needed to pack (and no doubt the awkwardness of him nearly touching her so intimately) she’d left before eight o’clock. It wasn’t brooding, he’d told himself bitterly: it was merely disappointment in himself that he’d allowed himself to get so carried away. Besides if Charlie had suddenly showed up with a man who was nearly as old as he was then he wouldn’t have liked it anymore than the Reagans will. 

Alex wasn’t alone with her lack of sleep hygiene, though Richard doesn’t mention it to her even when he should. No, his sleep has been troubled since before she was alive (_he really needs to stop phrasing things as such even in his own head_) and his body had just become accustomed to the four hours that he’d run on since he was a child. But at least it had given him time to call his daughter and inform her of his intentions to marry Alex. The response that she’d given him had been a surprise and a pleasant one for once. 

_‘Come on, Dad. Did you think I’d be surprised?! Do you know how many times you mentioned her when you were here? A day didn’t go by that you didn’t talk about her and I’m not an idiot. I’m just glad you got over yourself and did something about it.’_

Richard didn’t tell her about the reasoning behind why he’d proposed, and with a response like that he couldn’t. Things were still to fragile between them and the last thing that he wanted to do was to widen the barely closed rift between himself and the only child that he was ever going to have. If there was a god, Richard would have given thanks to it that he knows that Alex already doesn’t want children—at least then they weren’t going to be involving another innocent life in the madness around them. 

After putting her bags in the car for her (another sign of how tired Alex is; she didn’t protest him doing that like she normally otherwise would have) Richard just taps the outside of his suit and the ring box that was tucked inside of the internal picket. Alex doesn’t need to know the story of the ring and how he’d spotted it in an antique shop in Italy with Charlie early on during his trip. She also doesn’t need to know how he revisited the shop two further times before heading back to purchase it on the way to the airport because Richard had kept thinking of just how perfect it was for Alex Reagan and how good it would look on her slender fingers. She doesn’t need to know that he would have offered it to her anyway when he’d told her his feelings for her once this was all over. 

Instead once he had returned to the driver’s seat (Alex Reagan was even more of a menace behind the wheel than she was normally which was saying something so he always preferred to drive them anywhere) he just pointed out the thermos of coffee he’d made for her and the bag with two donuts along with it. Unsurprisingly Alex ignored the donuts and instead poured some of the coffee into her oversized travel mug. Judging from the fine tremor in her hands, it was probably the second time that it had been filled this morning. 

Sighing as he turned on NPR (one of the few things on the radio on which the two of them agreed) Richard just waited for an hour into their trip and until she’d finished half the thermos of coffee and one of the donuts before he asks softly: “seeing as we’ve still got a fair amount of time before we reach the bakery, do you want to go over the questionnaire some more?”

“Yeah,” she says after a second, balancing the coffee mug on her knee before she pulls the papers from her bag once more. This time Richard can tell that Alex has been making notes on it, filling in the things that she knows for sure. He’d done similar with the file that she’d sent to him and he’s got no doubt that the lingering questions for him are similar to the ones that she has. Only he doubts that they elicited the same response for her that they had for him. “You know the methodology for these questions is really weird. Like they ask for your partners preferred sexual position before they ask for their eye color or parents’ names.”

Richard just swallows very hard and tries not to picture Alex in _any_ sexual position but it’s like attempting not to think of an elephant when told not to and they plague his quite detailed imagination. So, Strand does what he does best: he pulls on the Dr. Strand persona, letting it settle to such extent that it goes beyond skin deep. “I believe there was a study on whether or not men could remember their wives eye color. I expect it’s based on that. Also I believe that many men simply aren’t all that observant when it comes to their partners.”

As expected, it makes Alex laugh, and the sound makes Richard feel warm all over, capturing the edge of Strand’s armor and prying it upwards with quick and nimble fingers. “Well, for the record my eyes are brown.”

“As if I could forget, Alex.” When he chances a look to her, Richard can see that she’s turned a lovely shade of pink but she doesn’t look displeased. If there’s one emotion that he can always parse in Alex Reagan, it’s her displeasure with him. He’s pleased that he’s not drawn her ire with this. But despite that, he still feels the need to cover himself. “I’ve spent how many hours staring at you from across the desk? And I’m equally certain that you remember mind. How did you put it on the show? Oh yes,” Richard clearly is relishing reciting this from memory, and just how it deepens that shade of pink to crimson. “‘_cool blue eyes that betray a sharp intelligence. He's a man who doesn't like to waste time or words. And he just looks like he knows something that the rest of us can't quite understand._’” 

“_Oh my god, Richard._ I can’t believe you’re quoting that back to me! I can’t believe you even remember it. I can’t even remember what I said that specifically. Besides,” she adds quickly, “we both know you liked it.”

Richard shifts as he drives but he doesn’t bother to deny it. Despite how much he’d like to be able to, he knows that Alex knows that it’s a secret that he barely keeps close to his chest. Yes, he can be vain. Their conversation last night about ‘_sugar daddies_’ he can’t help but to think with disdain, had proven that beyond the shadow of a doubt. So instead he just focuses on something else. “So the questionnaire?” He can’t help but to prompt her and he’s quite relieved when Alex seems to move onto a different question. 

Though he also can’t help but be disappointed too. 

“Wedding plans. I mean I guess I suppose that they need to ask about them but.” But Alex doesn’t go into that instead she just sighs. “I know you’d probably prefer some sort of really small courthouse ceremony given well…. _Everything_ but if I ever want my mother to speak to me again….”

“Of course we’ll do the big wedding Alex. It’s hardly as if I’d be the first groom to set aside his wishes in favor of keeping peace with his new in laws.” New in laws. Richard can’t help but wonder if the Jacobson’s have stopped cursing his name at this point. Or if Coralee has informed him of the lie that she’d kept up for twenty years. He expected Alex to laugh at that but instead she just shifts uncomfortably in the seat, shredding the second sprinkled donut that he’d bought for her into doughy ribbons. 

“I hate that you need to do this,” she says at last, her nails still ripping into the donut. “I’m pretty sure that my mother has been planning this since my adoption papers were finalized. My wedding I mean. I know that they’d put money away for it with my college fund. God, if she ever…”

“Alex no one is going to find out about this. I’ve seen the fan mail: people tend to assume that we’re together already. It’s not as if I’m unfamiliar with charming people if need be.”

“Really?” Alex just says with the smile that she’s trying desperately not to make twisting at her lips. Richard’s been at the other end of that expression more times than he can count and he still loves it every time. “You?”

“What you may think of my social graces aside, Ms. Reagan I bet that I can charm your mother into liking me before the end of the evening.”

“Oh. You are so on. I can taste the fancy coffee already. I’m thinking a fair amount of pumpkin spice with extra whipped cream for a month is in order.” It's an old hand, the betting like this, and Richard rarely finds himself on the losing side of them. Which is why he’s confident when he counters: 

“Oh I expect that you’re going to be enjoying a fair amount of kale in the future.”

Grimacing quickly Alex just says: “ugh. No one really enjoys kale. It’s just Stockholm Syndrome for people’s taste buds.” 

“I happen to be quite fond of kale.”

“Stockholm. Syndrome.” Alex just says quickly with a grin. But then it falters a little. “You know I’m pretty sure that she’s going to make the ICE interview seem pretty tame by comparison. My dad was a detective and let’s just say that I learned all of my better questioning techniques from my mom. I suppose we’re going to need to start with why I’m not wearing a ring. Maybe it’s getting sized or something?” From the look on Alex’s face it’s clear that this is something that she’s just thought of, and it bothers her. 

“There’s um.” Richard just clears his throat for a moment. “There’s no need. I…” without saying anything else, he just fumbles into his pocket for the antique velvet box and hands it to her without looking at her. 

Alex in turn accepts the box without opening it or looking at him. “When did you get this?”

“I’ve had it. For a while. It’s…” a pause and he considers. “Something that I was saving for Charlie. It belonged to my mother. But I remembered your quite long rant on how useless it is to purchase new jewelry and how conflict diamonds are as you say the worst so I thought this would be...more to your liking.” He’s lying to her again and Richard knows that he shouldn’t but. But it doesn’t matter what the but after the sentence should be. Instead the traffic in front of them slows to a stop and it gives him a chance to look at her._ Really look_ at the pink in her cheeks and the way that her fingers are still curled over the box. He can’t believe she hasn’t opened it. 

He wonders if Alex feels a bit like pandora at the moment but she speaks softly: “If you’re holding onto it for Charlie we can find something else. I don’t want to steal a piece of your family legacy for a lie.”

“Alex,” Richard just breathes softly and he lets go of the death grip of his steering wheel to reach for her hand, holding it tightly to the box. There are many things that he should say. He should come clean about the rings origin. He should tell her that it isn’t a lie at least on his end. He should tell her how lovely she looks in the way the dawn is breaking over the mountains. But instead what he says is: “you should have it for this weekend. If you hate it that much then we’ll find something else when we get back to town.”

Releasing his grip on her hand, he takes the box from her and opens it, exposing the Art Deco antique ring within. It’s rose gold with an ornate band and in the middle is a sapphire. From the way she gasps, Richard can tell that he’d made the right choice for her. “May I?” He just asks softly, sliding the ring from its satin casing. 

“Richard.” Alex just breathes his name, but she offers him her hand and the ring slides onto her finger easily. “It’s gorgeous. I guess it’s official now.”

“Yes,” he just breathes, watching the stone almost winking and coming alive against the pale slender finger. “I suppose it is.” It’s official and Richard’s heart is tattooing against his ribs wildly to see her in the ring he'd purchased for her. He knows that it shouldn’t, that it’s nothing more than another trap tying them together when she doesn’t want there to be but. Alex is wearing his ring. At some point in the future Alex will be wearing white and they will be married. 

It’s fantastic. But it’s not enough. I_ love you_ sticks in his throat, lodging in the familiar place that it always does for him and Richard can’t help but trace his fingers over hers for a second. “There. Now you have your ring. We have our tentative wedding plans. We know how the other sleeps and our favorite foods. Everything else should be a cakewalk.”

Despite Richard saying it should be a cakewalk, he can’t help picturing it being a tightrope between two skyscrapers. He doesn’t bring up the sexual position question. He doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or relieved that Alex doesn’t either even if the answer is on his tongue and waiting to breathe the truth: _anyway you’d let me have you, Alex._ It’s an old man’s fantasy and Richard Strand allows it to live there on his tongue and in his mind as they drive on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life!


	5. I can't fill it, I can't fill it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Richard arrive in her hometown where they run into her old girlfriend, Richard finds out about one of her childhood fears and the best laid plans of a believer and a skeptic go awry in a semi-spectacular fashion. 
> 
> (Or: there's only one bed.)

When they approach the village outside of Vancouver, Alex is twitching so much that Richard allows her to drive which she’s pretty sure means that the end of the world that Simon prophesied is actually upon them. Oh, he’d passed it off as not wanting to get them lost but Alex knows it for what it is: a way for her to regain some calm and control before they get to her parents house. Familiar sights speed by (though nowhere near as fast as they might as a concession to Richard’s sacrifice and the hand he has clamped onto the oh shit handle) and Alex just needs to take a deep breath as she points some of them out to him. Her high school, the pond where they went swimming when she was a kid, the place where Alex had her first job at an ice cream stand that’s now a parking lot. Oh, she knows that she’s babbling but it’s familiar and she hopes that he sees it as her telling Richard about herself and not for the nerves that it is. 

Richard of course sees through it, but he doesn’t say anything about it, for which Alex is very grateful. 

When they drive past the bakery on Main Street, it’s packed and parking is a nightmare as people rush in and out attempting to get their coffee and rolls before work. They’d made good time despite Richard’s tendency to drive like a grandfather, and she drives past the Main Street and out to a strip mall that contains the party store that had just opened. Parking the car, Alex just finishes the thermos of coffee and takes a deep breath, telling herself she’s not going to be that asshole who shows up for a big order right when they open. It’s not that she’s stalling! It’s that she’s being considerate! 

She’s stalling and from the expression on Richard’s face he knows it too. 

Unbuckling her seatbelt with a sigh, Alex just explains: “we’ll grab most of the decorations today. The balloons and stuff my aunt Rita will grab with her truck tomorrow.” Clearing her throat, Alex’s hand with her new ring just lingers on the door handle before she says lightly: “last chance to turn back.”

“I see no reason to turn back, Alex. Come on. Like a good fiancé I’ll help you carry the things to the car. If your aunt is anything like you, I expect that the decorations are definitely going to be extremely plentiful and over the top.” He keeps his voice mild but she knows that Richard is teasing her and Alex just laughs quickly. It’s easier than for her to walk into the small store and the bell chimes cheerfully as she holds the door open. 

What happens next surprises her and her eyes go wide when a blond just screams and throws her arms around Alex. “Millie! Oh my god I can’t believe it. I mean I saw your name on the invoice but I didn’t think you would be coming here to grab stuff! I mean I’m going to the party and everything but oh my god Millie! You look good! I mean you’re too skinny but.” She just squealed again and Alex hugs her back with a laugh. Even as she does, Alex’s cheeks are flushed at the mention of a nickname that she has tried to forget for the last twenty-five years. 

“Hey Jane. How are you? How’s your mom?” Alex’s heart is pounding a little bit and she can feel Richard’s question behind her even though he doesn’t ask it. Still, she gives her old girlfriend a grin, because she can’t help it. Her voice drops into a tone more teasing. “How’s Tiff and Susan? You know every time my mom sees you guys pushing the carriage she reminds me how cute kids are even though I said I never wanted them.”

Behind her, Richard starts to just wander around the store a little bit and Alex can’t help but wonder if he’s embraced but she focuses on the woman in front of her as she keeps speaking. “You need to be on Facebook more, Mills. She’s out of the carriage now. Every time we try to put her in it, she screams that she’s not a baby anymore.”

“Well, then I definitely guess she’s your kid huh?” The words come with another laugh as she traces her eyes over Richard’s back as he progressed further into the store. His back is straight and Alex knows that he’s doing the thing where he pretends he’s not listening but he’s definitely listening _intently_. 

But Alex’s attention is drawn back by a squeal from Jane and the way that her friend grabs her hand. “Alexandria Calliope Reagan are you _engaged_?” For a moment Alex just freezes up like a deer in headlights and she hopes that her smile is less stuck than she hopes. 

Recovering quickly she just says: “yes. Yes I am but Jane if you tell anyone before I get to tell my parents I’m going to stop by your mother’s house and tell her what _really_ happened to your grandmother's glass bowl that she brought over from the old country!”

Jane just mock gasps, her eyes alight and Alex is more than a little aware of the fact that she now has even more of a ticking clock to tell her parents about her engagement before someone else does, because if Jane is aware of it, it’s only a brief matter of time before the biggest gossip that she knows (which is saying something considering Alex knows Nic, Amalia and any number of interns across the years) and Jane Emery can’t keep a secret if her life depends on it. “Must be serious. So tell me about this mystery person, Millie.”

“I believe,” comes Richard’s smooth deep voice from her side of her and Alex reflexively smiles. “That would be me. Dr. Richard Strand. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh hello Richard.” Jane’s voice is a low purr. “It’s nice to meet you. I shouldn’t be surprised really. You’re definitely Alex’s type.” The words send a bright flush through Alex that only deepens when she realizes that Richard has grabbed her hand in order to stop it from balling into an involuntary fist. “She always had a thing for professors.” Jane wasn’t _wrong _of course, considering that she was one of Alex’s only friends but that didn’t mean that she should say that to the man whom she knew to be her fiancée. 

Richard Strand was her fiancée. No it didn’t get any less weird to think about the longer that the fact went on. 

“Well, it’s a lucky thing for me, I suppose.” His lie comes easily and Alex just smiles quickly. At least she hopes it’s a smile and not a grimace. 

She’s definitely trying really hard not to focus on the fact that Richard is holding her hand. He’s holding Alex’s hand for the first time and she can’t even properly enjoy it. “But I’m afraid we’re on something of a time table,” he continues quickly. “And just stopped in to pick up the decorations for tomorrow evening.”

Snapped back into professionalism by something either in Richard’s words or demeanor, Jane just gives him a quick smile. “Sure thing! It’s all packed up and ready. I can just ring you up and you can be on your way.” Picking up one large box after another, she just stacks them onto the counter and Alex just handed off her credit card. “We’ll see you tomorrow night, Alex. Good to meet you, Dr. Strand.”

As she’s putting her credit card away and Richard’s picking up the boxes, Alex just looks to her ex quickly. “I mean it, Jane. I _will_ tell your mother. She’ll kill you.”

“Okay okay I believe you. Gonna deny me the chance to spread the best news this town has heard in a while but I believe you. See ya later, Millie.” Though her hand doesn’t _quite_ reach into her pocket, Alex knows it’s only because Jane’s expecting that she’s going to keep her eyes on her friend until she can’t anymore. And honestly? Jane isn’t at all wrong. 

Without even thinking about it, Alex just undoes the trunk release before she slips into the drivers side seat and taking a deep breath. This is what it was going to be like now wasn’t it!? For all of her moral flexibility, Alex Reagan hates lying to people who she cares about. Right now, she’s realizing that she’s going to be lying to everyone she cares about for the rest of her life. But she does make some rationalizations as Alex feels the sapphire of her engagement ring against her cheek. Her engagement ring. The ring isn’t a lie. The engagement itself isn’t a lie. Her emotions for Richard Strand had never been a lie, even if Alex’s not been honest with _him_ about them. But she’s not going to be now, now when they’ve got everything else all bound together in keeping her here. Taking a deep breath, Alex just nods before Richard slides into the passenger seat and puts his seatbelt on. 

They’re quiet for a moment and then Alex starts the car and pulls out of the space. When they’re on the road, Richard’s voice is soft and amused when he asks: “Millie?” 

Letting out a sigh and rolling her eyes because of course Richard would ask about that (not that Alex herself would be any better about it. And at least she’s self aware enough to know that about herself too) Alex just flips on the windshield wipers and explains. “Okay so, for a good chunk of my life, my Dad and some of his other cop friends would go in on renting cabins together. When I was eight, the Embery family moved into town and Jane’s Dad and mine became close, so that summer he invited them. Jane’s brother Tim was nine and he was a fucking brat. He liked to torment me as much as he could.” 

Alex takes a sip of her coffee before she just continues. “The problem was that for the most part, everyone would just say that he was tormenting me because he _liked_ me which was bullshit and is just stupid problematic behavior. We were playing double dog dare on one of the last days of the week when Tim triple dog dared me to go under this old rowboat that they had up on blocks by the lake. I don’t know if you know, Richard,” for the first time, there’s a smile in her voice, and she just glances over at him quickly with a grin, “but triple dog daring me to do something is my kryptonite.” 

“As is telling you _not_ to do something, Alex. But continue.” Richard just gives him his wry smile back. 

“You know, Dr. Strand.” It hasn’t escaped Alex’s notice that she uses ‘Dr. Strand’ entirely too much when she’s flirting with him, but right now, for the first time she doesn’t feel the need to reign that in. “One could say entirely the same thing about you.” When he doesn’t respond, Alex just coughs something that sounds extremely close to both ‘Thomas Warren’ and Daeva Corp, but he doesn’t remark upon it, so Alex just rolls her eyes and continues with her story. 

“So, I went underneath it. I was supposed to stay there for three seconds, but Tim like the complete fucking asshole that he is kicked it off the wooden blocks. I couldn’t lift it, and I was trapped. It wasn’t so bad at first but then I felt stuff crawling on me. Then I started to scream and to kick. I was stuck under there for thirty minutes before Jane went and got my Dad. I had never seen my Dad so pissed off in my entire life. He and Mr. Emery got me out from under the boat, and then my Dad spanked Tim, telling him that he could have gotten me killed. Unfortunately, we were all in the same school, and Tim wasted no time in telling everyone that I’m completely terrified of millipedes, because they were all over me when I got out from under the boat. Remember when I knocked down the whiteboard in my office and you were ready to strangle me? There was a millipede on it, so I hit it with my office phone. And broke that too.

“I’m totally fine with spiders, snakes, sharks, bees, all of that. But give me a millipede…” A pause and a glance towards him before Alex just adds with a sigh: “or a demon or a mental hospital, and I freak out. So there you go, Richard, one more thing for the questionnaire. By the time I got to high school, the name had more or less stuck even if the reasoning behind it had been forgotten so… Jane wasn’t like being an asshole when she called me that. It’s just what all the kids called me here.” 

Alex tries to brush it off with a laugh before Richard responds with something that Alex can’t quite qualify in his voice: “what happened to the boy? Am I going to make his no doubt charming acquaintance tomorrow evening?” 

“I don’t know. I kinda lost contact with him after he caught his sister and I having sex in her car during our senior year. Turns out he may have had a thing for me after all.” 

Richard just laughs then, and Alex joins him in the laugh before she turns down a familiar street, and her stomach is in her throat and her heart is in somehow where her stomach should be. Driving up to the cheerful yellow two story house, Alex just spots her mom in the yard, kneeling down and with her hands deep into her flowerbeds. “Last chance to run away and elope.” She just offers to Richard before the blond woman rises to her feet and yelps her name. “Or not.”

Richard takes her hand and squeezes it for what is no doubt moral support. “It’s going to be alright, Alex.”

“Sure.” She doesn’t sound quite convinced, because Alex isn’t but it really is too late now as her mother is even with the front of the car as Alex turns it off. 

“Alex!” Her mom cries happily and she’s got Alex in her arms before she can even get the door open all the way to fully exit the car. “We weren’t expecting you until closer to dinner!” 

“Yeah. We made good time. And the bakery was packed so we figured we could go back later. Or tomorrow.” That said, she does hug her mother tightly back, burying her face in the crook of the taller woman’s neck. It’s been a long few days (and months. And years honestly) and Alex can definitely do with a hug. “Sorry, I should have called…”

“Oh nonsense honey! You know me, I can always just throw the kettle on and there’s sandwich stuff in the fridge. I was just about to fix something for your father anyway!”

“Oh where is Dad?” It’s not that Alex is trying to buy time, but she’s most certainly attempting to purchase something. Having always been closer to her father, Alex can’t help but to count on him to be here when her mother finds out that she’s engaged to someone who they haven’t met yet. 

“Oh you know your father, he’s in the garage trying to pretend that he can’t find the leaves for the table so we have to cancel having everyone out here tonight.” Oh, Alex thinks that makes sense but… Oh no but. 

“Wait, they’re coming here? I thought we had reservations at Mooney’s?” Alex sounds confused, and more than that she is confused because honestly she was counting on the buffer of the restaurant and not needing to do dishes so that she could get Richard away from her family as soon as possible this evening. It’s not that far from the hotel, making escape even easier. 

“We did!” Alice’s voice is chipper and she just grins at her daughter as she brushes some of Alex’s hair from her face. “But I thought being as you were bringing Richard it might be nice if we had dinner here at the house.”

“We were already having dinner at the house, Mom. On Sunday?” Where they already would have met Richard, and have gotten the worst of the questions out of the way when they were still in polite mode for the party. 

“Well, you know Sunday is a _family_ dinner…” 

Something twists in Alex’s chest, and maybe it’s not just millipedes, demons and mental hospitals that she’s all that afraid of. Without being able to stop it, a groan just almost drags itself from her lips. “Mother please tell me you didn’t just decide to throw one of your spur of the moment neighborhood potlucks.” 

“Alex, why do you only call me mother when you’re unhappy?” 

“Mom,” Alex just sighs and she becomes keenly aware of two facts. The first fact is that Richard has definitely imprinted on her like a chicken because the sigh that she made was most assuredly his ‘please tell me you didn’t do the stupid thing you definitely did, Alex’ sigh and secondly that Richard himself has now come along the side of them like a specter that’s attempting to give them space. “Please tell me that you aren’t throwing a potluck here tonight with the entire neighborhood just so that they can meet Richard!” 

“Not the whole neighborhood, no. I mean you really didn’t give me a chance to get the whole neighborhood to come, Alex! You call me up yesterday afternoon and say that you’re bringing up a man and that you’ve got big news to tell me! People had _plans_ and if I had more time it would have been…” Richard just clears his throat, catching the attention of both of the Reagan women and if Alex and his relationship was real, she probably would have kissed him for it. Hell, she’s tempted to do it _now_ anyway just for stopping her mother before she can build up anymore steam. 

No, Alex isn’t going to think about the fact that he’s had a fair amount of practice from pulling the same trick on her. Or, alternatively how much she’s had doing the same thing to _him_. 

“It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Reagan. I’m Richard Strand.” Alice just looks to him for a moment as if she’s surprised that someone Alex is dating would interrupt her like this (_and she really shouldn’t be, Alex thinks, because literally _everyone_ that Alex has dated_does.) But the smile comes easily, and she just leans forward and hugs him quickly much to Alex’s amusement. An amusement that she needs to bite her lips around but somehow goes well along with the taste of Alex’s own liver as she realizes that _her mother_ is hugging Richard before Alex gets the chance to. “Alex’s told me a lot about you.” 

Somehow Richard isn’t stiff in her mother’s embrace and for the first time, Alex considers that she might lose that bet after all. Then again, considering what willpower she’s sure that Strand is exerting is probably gargunatan, and Alex can’t help but feel the smallest bit bad for that. She knows better than anyone else how overbearing her mom can be. 

“I’ve heard a lot about you too, Richard.” Oh, _oh_ that is most assuredly alarm bells going off in Alex’s head, and her eyes go wide as she tries to catch her mother’s eye over Richard’s shoulder. Of course, given the way that Strand’s always towered over her, Alex doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell that it would work! Pleading to the universe, god, whatever that her mother isn’t going to keep going, Alex’s cheeks turn crimson and she’d dearly like to fall into the earth as her mother continues. “I always thought that it was a case of her doth protest too much, and you know there’s such a fine line between anger and passion…” 

Well, that makes Richard still, and Alex just squeaks out quickly. “Mom!” 

“Oh, come on honey! It’s not like he doesn’t know you! He knows how you can be!” 

“Not the point, mother!” 

“Oh, but I do know of course. Alex and I are very good at fighting. Fortunately, we’re also quite good at making up as well…” And now Alex can’t help but to wonder if she’s somehow having a nightmare and she’s going to look down and actually be _naked_ or some sort of other terrible dream trope. At least it’d be a nice change from the demons that normally inhabit her dreamscape! 

“Now who’s fighting and who’s making up?” The sound of her father’s voice fills Alex with a bubble of relieved laughter, and she can’t help but to throw herself into _his_ arms. 

“Hi Dad.” She holds onto him tightly for a moment, taking in the familiar garage smell of oil and dust. Danny Reagan taught Alex how to change her oil and a tire in the garage, and how to break someone’s nose knee caps too and more often than not, it’d been a haven that she could go to when her mother was being unbearable. Like now for instance. “You haven’t been overdoing it in the garage have you? I would have helped when I got here.” After her father’s heart attack a few years ago, it’s second nature for Alex to worry about him, she can’t help it. Anymore than she can help worrying about other idiot men in her life. 

Idiot men who were now extending their hand to her father with a smile. “Mr. Reagan.” Danny just looks to Richard for a second before he holds up his hand, but not to shake it. 

“Nice to meet you, Richard, but I’ve been messing around with a spill in the garage.” True to his easy-going word, there is a black stain on his hand that he’d managed to avoid getting on Alex’s red jacket but it was clear that a handshake wasn’t going to be quite that easy. “Let me go in and wash up and then I’ll come out and give you a hand with your bags.” 

“Our bags? Dad, you don’t need to do this. We have a room at…” 

“At the Royal,” Alice adds quickly. “We know. Daisy Pocker’s granddaughter is the clerk there. Alexandra I don’t know why you bothered. Of course we’re not going to have you stay at a hotel! We got you that nice queen size bed for your room so when you came home with your partner you’d have the space for it.” 

“Mrs. Reagan,” Richard starts, and Alex notices that his eyes are more than a little wild, and there’s a subtle fussing of color in his cheeks and crawling up the back of his neck. 

“Alice.” Her mother says evenly, not breaking eye contact with him. 

“Yes. Alice. Of course.” And then he pauses, clearly trying to find the right words that are going to make this all better. Looking to Alex, she’s got no answers for him, and she knows that her expression is just as shocked as his is even as he, being Richard Strand just tries to Strand on. “That is to say that I wouldn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable in your own home. You see, Alex and I we’ve gotten quite used to…” 

From the look on Alice’s face, it’s clear that the blond intends to give Richard a fair amount of rope, but she doesn’t intend for him to hang himself entirely, so she just shakes her head. “Oh please, Richard. We know that Alex has sex with people. We’ve known since we caught her with Jane Emery when she was seventeen and we came home early from a weekend away. She’s an adult. You’re an adult, and we’re not old fashioned. There’s really no need for you two to rent a hotel.”

“Right.” He says quickly, and Alex knows that look. She knows that look all too well because she’s seen it on her own face, her partner’s faces and hell even Nic’s face more than once. Richard even continues: “Yes. Of course. Sorry I just…” 

“You were just trying to be respectful, Richard!” Alice continues with a smile, and Alex notices that her father has disappeared into the house somewhere in the middle of that mortifying scene. Which was real, and this might be some level of hell where only mothers can make their children that red without the use of baby pictures. _Fuck_, she really hope her mother isn’t planning on getting out the pictures from when she was young. That’s the last thing that she needs for multiple reasons. 

“Danny and I appreciate it. Come inside. I’ll make coffee, and I’ve got some banana bread that I made this morning. I know you’ve both had a long drive.” 

“Mom, I told you Richard drinks tea.” Alex just sighs the words as she follows her mother up the brick path, with Richard at her side throwing glances her way and looking a little bit shellshocked. Hell, _she_ feels shell-shocked and this is what dealing with her mother is like all the time. Wrapping her hand tightly around his, Alex just gives his fingers a squeeze to remind them that they’re in this together. 

He squeezes back because they are. 

Of course those happy thoughts are broken off by the sound of her mother’s text alert and panic just blooms in her chest. “Mom don’t read that yet!”

“Alex I have to, it could be about the potluck!”

“Can’t it wait?! I mean we just got here!”

“Alex it's a text message! It’s not like it’s going to take very long!”

“Mom, please! I have something to tell you and I want to do it with you and dad…”

But it’s too late and Alice just reads the text message anyway. Bracing as if for a bomb to go off, Alex’s step just falters before her mother just yells: “Alexandra Calliope Reagan you’re engaged and you didn’t tell me yet?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your guys' support around this fic. I'm glad you're loving it as much as I am! Comments and kudos give me life!


	6. Are laid out one by one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fictional tale of how the two of them got engaged is born and Alex and Richard discuss the single bed like adults. (No really.) And Danny Reagan is a champ. Also they have a conversation about Richard's unabomber look. (Sort of.)

“Alexandra Calliope Reagan you’re engaged and you didn’t tell me yet?!” From the stories that Alex had told him (and there was always a fair amount of alcohol involved, because when Richard needed it to discuss his father, she needed it to discuss her mother) he had told that Alice Reagan was every bit as formidable as her daughter if not more so. Now as he looks to the older blond woman (who wasn’t that much older than he was truth be told which was something of a blessing in disguise) he knows that if anything Alex had undersold the tales that she’d told of her mother. 

For a moment neither of them speak, none of them speak but Alex just leads him into the house without saying anything. The look on her face is a familiar one, and Richard is acutely aware of the fact that Alex is now mentally counting backwards from ten so that she doesn’t say something out of anger. It’s a tactic that he respects now, where as before (at least early in their working relationship) Richard might have tried to bait her into breaking that count. Now, however, he realizes that he’s just holding his breath as he’s waiting to follow her lead. 

Despite all of that, Richard can’t help but noting the cheerfulness of the large house. It reminds him of his home back in Pennsylvania when his mother still lived and their home would smell of banana bread, coffee and whatever flowers or shrubs had currently been blooming in his mother’s garden. Glancing at the pictures that dot the walls, he can chart the growth of Alex Reagan from a shy and haunted three year old, to a precocious five year old and then further as all of the pieces of the Alex Reagan that he loved fully formed. A woman who he loved who was currently facing off against her mother in the middle of the foyer. 

“Mom we came up here specifically to tell you in person. I didn’t even tell Jane! She just happened to notice the ring on my finger. I told her not to say anything until I saw you but you know Jane!”

“I just can’t believe it, Alex. Are we the last ones to know?”

“No Mom! Of course not! I just thought you would want to hear in person and meet the man whom I’m going to marry before I told you about it on the phone. Sorry I didn’t get the chance to tell you before!”

“Alexandra I talk to you every Sunday after church. How long has this been going on?!”

Deciding that Alex did in fact need help, Richard just steps in quickly. “Mrs Reagan.” Alice’s cold eyes hit his and he tried again. “Alice. Due to how Alex and I were professionally involved we didn’t think it prudent to tell anyone that our relationship had progressed to the next level. Indeed, if my daughter hadn’t been six thousand miles away I would have chosen to have told her in person.”

“You told Charlie?” Alex just asks softly because even now the reckless pursuit of her questions doesn’t stop and Richard just sighs softly in response as she asks another one. “What did she say?”

“She wasn’t surprised,” he offers softly, and smiles at her a little bit. “She told me that I didn’t shut up about you when I was in Italy apparently.” Clearing his throat Richard just adds: “I can understand your frustrations, Alice but.”

Thankfully then, Danny comes out from the hallway and places his hands on Alice’s shoulders. “Alice, honey, our child wanted to tell us in person as a surprise. Can’t fault her for that. You know how our Alex is.” Some of the tension visibly leaves Alice and he presses a kiss to her temple. “Come on through to the kitchen, you two. Show us the ring.”

“Yeah. There’s coffee on the stove and I’ll put the kettle on for Richard’s tea. There’s banana bread there and then we’ll get you set up in your room before the potluck tonight.” Alice sounds confident, and Richard is gripping Alex’s hand extremely tightly as they walk into a kitchen of shiny light blue and wood. From the window over the sink, he can see an old tire swing in the backyard, swaying lightly in the breeze. Somehow this is exactly how he imagined Alex growing up and it makes him smile a bit before he takes a seat at the well worn kitchen table. 

Alice bustles around, grabbing coffee cups and putting the old fashioned kettle on the stove. There’s another ancient appliance next to it in the form of an old drip coffee maker that he’s no doubt is somehow older than his father would be if he were somehow living today. Alex hovers a bit for a moment before she goes to start moving towards the refrigerator and Richard is relieved to see Danny catching his daughter by the elbow and nudging her silently to take a seat at the table. There’s a nervous energy in Alex that he can easily spot and Richard is under no illusions that the reasons that he can see them are anything close to the time that they’ve spent together. In fact, he’s reasonably certain that a blind man would be able to see them. 

He tells himself that’s not concerning. 

After a moment, Alex just takes the seat next to him, and Richard finds himself reaching out for her hand once more. It’s odd really how now that he’s been able to do so it’s almost as if a seal has been broken, a preverbal trickle now that the dutch boy’s finger has been removed from the hole in the dike. Wrapping his fingers around her own, he just gives them a gentle squeeze, and steadfastly ignores the way that he can feel them trembling a bit. This isn’t Alex’s fear twitching, and he knows it. If it were that, Alex would simply wrap the strands of her pluckiness around it and fashion them into some sort of accessory, using her bravery as a way of progressing through the worst of the emotions. Instead this is something different, an unpleasant anticipation that Richard is more than aware of the fact that he’s got his fingertips all over. 

Coffee and tea (lipton, he notes and Richard forces himself to school his face into the bland sense of an almost smile he uses when his students seem to be about to have some sort of crying fit in front of him) are set in the middle of the table, along with a butter dish and the promised banana bread, and then Alice and Danny join them, making the kitchen table seem too crowded somehow. The feeling reminds him uncomfortably of the house in Chicago and how it had felt as if it was too crowded among the living when there were still ghosts resting in their positions and waiting. 

Internally shaking his head, Richard just feels Alex squeezing his fingers back as if she can sense his distress just as intimately as he can sense hers. But he doesn’t say anything, instead he’s just dunking the tea bag with his other hand into the cup of hot water and realizing that he’s going to need to choke it down. Similarly he knows that Alex is going to choke down her coffee. His fiancée (_fiancée_ he marvels unexpectedly) is something of a coffee snob and this definitely is maxwell house and has been sitting far too long—even he can see that. Unexpecting her to say something about it (which she certainly would if she was at his father’s house) Richard can’t help but be surprised as instead she overloads it with milk and sugar and he vows to get her a proper cup as soon as he’s able. 

It’s the least he can do. 

Danny speaks quickly, and his question gives them both pause and they look at one another in response to it. “Well, baby tell us how your Richard proposed.”

Sensing Alex’s discomfort at lying to her father, Richard just clears his throat before he speaks. He’s definitely better at lying (especially to himself) than Alex is so he takes the lead. “I’m afraid there’s not much to tell. I’m not by nature a romantic man,” _lies_ something in the back of his head whispers and it sounds like himself before Charlie’s mother and Coralee taught him that his lot in life was loss, “so unfortunately there was no grand plan. It was something of an impulsive decision.” Well that at least was truth and next to him Alex just laughs softly. 

“But Alex And I were working quite late at her office one evening.” He had nearly said ‘his father’s house’ but Richard hardly wanted to explain that! “And Alex had gone to fetch another cup of coffee. When she came in, she was balancing that and a cup of tea for me along with a bag from my favorite bakery between her teeth. Apparently there had been some sort of party earlier for the interns and she had secreted away the last scone for us to share. I decided right then and there that’s what I wanted for the rest of my life and proposed to her on the spot. 

Though the proposing to Alex on the spot was a lie, the rest of it most assuredly was not. It had happened like Richard had said, and it had happened far earlier on in their acquaintance than he would have liked to have admitted. It was after he’d come back from their first long term separation, before he’d moved into his father’s house even. The pallor of mania was still on him, and Richard was relatively certain that it had passed to Alex. Neither of them were sleeping or eating properly, pumping themselves instead on caffeine and convenience foods and knowledge. But in the middle of that night, Alex had brought him tea and herself coffee and they’d split the scone and had actually had a conversation that had nothing to do with the tapes or Coralee or anything of that nature. It had been nice, just sitting with their feet up on her desk trading barbs about nothing serious rather than how sharp their fights normally could be. It had been one of the times when he’d realized that he cared far too much for Alex Reagan than he should, and immediately he had needed to shatter it by making some jab towards the way that she’d been acting and Richard regretted it. He wasn’t a good man, but the first part of that memory is a fond one. 

He can’t help but wonder if she even remembers it at all. 

“I said yes,”’ Alex adds quickly. “Immediately after I brushed some of the chocolate off of his beard. He’d had a beard then.” Her voice is soft and slightly dream-like, and Richard can’t help but color as he remembers the feeling of the pads of Alex’s fingertips brushing along the lower line of his lip oh so gently as if she was terrified that he might bite her or bolt. In the end he’d done both, and the color that he wears in his cheeks is one of shame. 

Telling himself that he’s just doing it to cover his own embarrassment, Richard just lifts their combined hands to his lips and he dots a soft kiss onto the back of her hand. It’s a sense memory that invokes more of that night, and more of what he wishes had actually happened that night other than cruel and sharp words and him disappearing on her again the next day. 

“I’m glad he shaved it off,” the words come with a laugh, and Richard has always loved Alex’s laugh, and it’s a salve to the sharpness of those old burns, letting him instead focusing on the now. 

“Well, Alex, you weren’t exactly subtle about your dislike of it.” This too feels like old hat, the not-entirely-professional flirting that they’ve been doing for three years. “I do believe that you threatened to hold me down and shave it off of me if I ever grew it back again.” 

“And I definitely would, Richard. I definitely would.” The determination in her eyes and in her voice makes Alex’s parents laugh, and for a moment Richard had almost forgotten that they were there. Clearing his throat for a moment, Richard just takes a sip of the tea before he can say anything in response to the flirting in her voice, and rationalizes that it’s what someone in love with their daughter would do in front of his new inlaws. 

Time passes slowly as he sits next to Alex in her parents kitchen, and he can feel her start to lag a little bit as the coffee that normally would have provided her life blood was made of far more milk than actual caffeine. When one added the sugar from the quite delicious (Richard is tempted to ask for the recipe) banana bread, he’s feeling quite lethargic himself. Once more, it’s Danny who saves the day making a suggestion that they bring up the luggage and let Alex and Richard take a nap before they needed to force him to meet the various assorted neighbors this evening. Alex and Richard take the lion’s share of their luggage up to the white door at the top of the stairs, and Richard just feels more than a bit like a voyeur as he passes through the threshold into the room that had held so many of Alex's childhood and teenage dreams. 

The room is in a light lavender, and the bed is larger than one would have otherwise expected, and Richard can see where the personal belongings of the woman who had once owned this room have been shifted and bunched up to account for this single trapping of what it might mean for Alex to return here as an adult. Richard can’t help but to look around to the walls, spying pictures tucked into framed travel posters from places that he’d known Alex to have gone. Paris, London, New York, Greece, hell even his own Chicago was on there. 

Not in frames, but given no less in importance are fading pages of newspapers. The articles form a collage of that time in her life almost, tiny things she wrote when she was a freshman, covering local football games, then larger news pieces and finally front page spreads of the stories that she’d told him about when Alex had also shown him the tattoo on her side. He doesn’t want to think about that. Or how the hue of the room matches the lace of her bra _exactly_. 

Turning towards Alex’s bookshelves, he finds the typical teenage girl fair there, the spines cracked from love and being well used. What he doesn’t expect is the pictures of Alex in a softball uniform, or the old glove that went with them. There’s even a hat with a bear embossed onto it draped over a trophy that bears her name. This is a piece of Alex he didn’t know about but Richard finds himself intimately wanting to learn. 

While he’s going over her room with an intensity that she clearly expects, Alex herself is hanging up garment bags and putting their still packed suitcases into a closet that’s surprisingly empty. His briefcase and her purse are in her hands as she just stares at the one thing that Richard has been intent on avoiding entirely. “There’s only one bed.” The words come softly from her mouth as she moves her eyes over the clearly old and well-loved quilt that rests over the top of it. 

“There’s only one bed,” Richard agrees, matching her tone because it’s better to do that than to give into the rising panic that wraps around his chest at the idea of it. There is no small part of Richard Strand that wants to yell about it in a pitch that only dogs would be able to hear, but he’s self aware enough to know that it’s not going to help the situation in the slightest. “There are enough pillows. We’ll ask for an extra blanket and I’ll take the floor.”

“That’s a really stupid idea, Richard,” Alex counters after a moment and he can tell that she’s counting again in order to keep her voice level so that it doesn’t reach down the stairs to where her parents are. “For a lot of reasons. Not the least of which are the fact that you agreed to go fishing with my dad tomorrow morning. He’s going to knock at four. Or my mom is.” He can’t help but notice that Alex adds, half below her breath. “Or at least I hope she’ll knock anyway.” 

“Yes well,” instantly defensive (though not entirely with Alex herself, he knows and hopes that she’s aware of that fact as well) “I hardly think it would be polite to have denied his invitation considering how earnestly it was given or the fact that he’s going to be my father in law and that’s how this thing is normally done, Alex.” Richard doesn’t add the fact that he also is hoping for stories of when her father used to take Alex herself fishing because something that requires both silence and stillness seems antithetical to everything that he’s ever known about Alex Reagan. It was something that had come up, and the stories of Alex that he was told this afternoon are definitely going to be some that he chuckles over for a good long time. 

When he’s away from her hearing of course. Richard Strand is an asshole but he’s not _that_ much of one to her. At least anymore. 

“We’ll share,” Alex says firmly after a moment as if she’s come to a decision and Richard can’t help but to be taken back by it. “We’re both adults. We can share. I mean how are we supposed to share our lives if we can’t share one bed without it being awkward?!”

Richard needs to physically bite his tongue in order to not remind Alex that they have been sharing one another’s lives _for the last three years_ and that’s hardly ever helped the two of them out with an awkward situation, but he knows that it’s not going to help anything. He doesn’t actually agree, but Richard does fall back on another old hat: a non-apology apology. Checking his watch, he just says quickly: “the bakery should have cleared out by now. Let’s head there and get some proper coffee into you. I should pick up something for the potluck anyway.”

“You really don’t need to do that, Richard. My neighborhood is really good at throwing potlucks.”

“Well,” he just counters mildly, “I do believe I owe you something with kale in it after all.”

Alex laughs, which is of course the goal in his saying it and inwardly he preens a bit. “You can’t be seriously counting that as a victory, Richard.”

“Can’t I? I do believe that counts as being charmed, Ms. Reagan. So we’re going to need to visit some sort of market at the very least.”

“Double or nothing?” Alex counters in something very close to a whine. 

“Now don’t be a sore loser, Alex.” He says quickly and she picks up her purse. “Your mother is certainly eating out of my hands already.”

Even Richard Strand doesn’t know how much of famous last words those were going to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your lovely reading and commenting and kudos. It really makes me so pleased so many people like this!


	7. There's a hole in my soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard gives Alex a much needed peptalk, endures a Canadian potluck, meets Alex's grandmother and these two idiots have their first kiss. 
> 
> In public.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all of your kudos and comments! They legit mean the world to me! We've just hit 30k words in my doc, so there's still a lot of this fic left to go! I'm glad you're all enjoying it as much as I am writing it.

By the time Alex and Richard return from the bakery, the market (‘pick up a few things for me, honey’ from her mother had turned into quite an extensive list) and at Alex’s own insistence that they stop at a liquor store (‘if you think I’m dealing with my mother’s friends sober you’re nuts!”) the potluck already seems to be in near full swing. Parking her car where the porch light doesn’t quite reach, Alex just grabs the brown paper bag wrapped bottle of bourbon that she’d picked up for them and unscrews the lid. “It’s not those weird black two hundred dollar whiskey glasses that you want from England,” she says quickly before she takes a long sip and follows it with a wince. “But it’ll have to do.”

When she offers the bottle to him, Richard takes it with obvious reluctance but he follows suit with a generous slug of his own. That helps a little, Alex can admit. It means that she’s not the only person who’s dreading going into this unexpected party. When he gives her the bottle back, Alex just takes another sip and stares at the black silhouettes that move behind her mom’s sheer curtains. “My mom might refuse to listen to the show, but I’m sure that some of her friends do. I was planning on avoiding it by talking about how people would need to listen but they always ask a lot about you so, I’m sorry in advance for that.”

Well, with that Richard reaches back for the bottle and takes a sip of it almost seemingly for courage before he asks somewhat hesitantly “they ask about me? What kinds of things do they ask?”

Both of them know about what sort of things they’d been asking for the last three years not the least of which is he actually psychic or is Coralee really alive or if the two of them are together. That answer had been an empathetic no until. Well twenty-four hours ago, Alex supposed. Taking another sip of bourbon she just shrugs and says innocently “mostly if you actually sound as sexy in person as you do on the show.” It’s not a lie, and it has the doubled effect of making him give the huffy laugh Alex loves so. 

There’s something in Richard’s voice that makes Alex’s stomach flip over in a way that she really shouldn’t be thinking about when he asks: “and how do you respond, Alex?” 

In that moment, something that Alex can’t name passes between them and for a second, she’s not certain if she’s passing him the bottle or if she’s about to kiss him before the ringer on her phone in the console between them blares into life: ‘_Mama mia Mama Mia let me go._ What was going to happen shifts, lost in Freddie Mercury’s voice and Alex’s own groan. “Please for the love of god remind me to turn my ringer off before we go inside or she’s going to freak.” And then pressing the accept call button with far more force is necessary she says: “hi mom.” 

“Alex, you’ve been gone forever, everyone’s here and we need the paper plates and the ice.” 

“Yeah, we just pulled in. We’ll be there in a second. Richard and I’ve got everything, you don’t need to send Dad okay? See you in a minute.” Hanging up without a real goodbye or ‘I love you’ is easy, easier than she wants it to be. As Alex sighs softly, Richard just hands her the bottle with no small measure of sympathy. While she drinks, he just traces his fingers over the hand that’s currently wearing her engagement ring. The touch is soft, how Alex imagines that his fingers would have felt if he’d touched her tattoo last night. Or any other piece of her. Ever. It’s soft and warm and it takes a great deal for Alex not to move into it like a cat. 

“The Alex Reagan I know,” he says softly, his blue eyes locking with her own. “The Alex Reagan I am _going to marry_ can handle watching black tapes at three in the morning in my father’s house. She can handle not sleeping for three years. She can go to Turkey alone to meet with her pet murderer even though everyone in her life told her not too. She can handle days without enough coffee and smirks in the presence of Nicodemus Silver’s judgment face. She can handle a party with people who have known her all her life.” A beat and then he adds, “no matter how embarrassing it may end up being for both of us.” 

If Alex had thought that she might have kissed him before, she was definitely about to kiss him for that speech. She would have probably if she didn’t see the front door open and the shadow of one of her neighbors come out towards her car. The moment slips, tumbling from her fingers and instead Alex just takes another sip of the bourbon before she hands it back with a smile and a bad joke as if that would somehow manage to undo the impulse that is still twitching in her muscles to throw herself into his arms and kiss him. “Well, I mean we all know how well my bad decisions turn out, _Dr. Strand_.” Damn, she didn’t mean to get that flirty with it, but it doesn’t matter as the figure reaches the car and knocks on the window. 

Of course, _of course_ it’s Tim and Alex would like nothing more than to sink into the car seat and below it as she rolls down the window. “Everything alright out here? Your mom said you guys could use a hand.”

“Yeah, Tim. Thanks. I’m gonna pop the trunk.” Rolling up the window, Alex just glances at the retreating bulk of the football player gone to seed and mouths _‘Tim_?” At her as she sighs and nods. The dislike in Richard’s face only intensifies to a level that Alex only equates with a few people that she can count on one hand: Thomas Warren, Tannis Braun and well, that might be the only two honestly. But she hands him the cover to the bottle, and subtly gestures to below the seat as the trunk opens, spilling bright light into the car. 

“It’s great to see you, Alex!” Tim’s voice is jovial, and he starts gathering up the reusable grocery bags that she’d pressured Richard into buying when Seattle had become a more permanent base of operations onto his arms. She barely has time to grab her purse before Richard is out of the car, grabbing at the rest of the bags before Tim’s fingers can touch him. Not being an idiot, Alex is well aware of what’s going on, and for a moment she can’t help but wonder if the bourbon is hitting a stomach empty of anything but pastry and coffee faster than she thought it would. But no, he’s definitely attempting to out carry Tim with the grocery load in a way that is most certainly mimicking the way that he was determined to hike to the cabin where Sebastian was held in his suit and dress shoes. Biting her lip over a laugh, Alex just gets out of the car and walks towards the house, letting Richard carry out his dick measuring contest without her there. 

Of course, not immediately attaching herself to Richard’s hip was another stupid and reckless decision, because one she ended up inside of the house, she was immediately drawn into crowd after crowd and conversation after conversation. Alex Reagan is normally an extrovert who thrives on crowds, but this one is entirely stifling to her. The same questions are posed repeatedly, and it becomes a script that Alex plays to constantly: showing them her ring (‘a Strand family heirloom’) how long they’ve been officially together (‘a while now’) how he proposed (the same story he’d told her parents, but with some small variance in the details) what the wedding plans were (we don’t know yet, other than it’ll be here probably and soonish) and then how happy she looks. (Thanks, I’m really happy. Richard is… something I never expected.) The last one is definitely not a lie. 

At least people feed her. Alex is definitely feeling the bourbon now, and nearly an hour has passed before she’d gotten anywhere near him. Oh, she keeps her eyes on him of course. Mrs. O’Leary was when Alex had gotten the closest, and she’d tried to intervene to save him from the woman who was old enough to be her great grandmother. But she’d not gotten close enough to stop the old woman from reaching up and touching his face. “Such cheekbones!” The woman’s brittle voice carried easily through the crowd to Alex. “You and Alex are going to have the most attractive children! I told Alex that she’d change her mind about them some day, and of course after the wedding you’re going to have a big family!” With her cheeks flushing crimson, Alex put her hand on her stomach for a moment because she felt more than a little sick at the idea of having a kid and bringing it into this whole mess (and because she’s never wanted them anyway) but her mother caught sight of her, watching Alex shrewdly before she’d dragged her over to the food table and made her eat something else. 

But when she sees Richard talking to her grandmother, Alex can’t help but to fight her way through the crowd to his side. Grandma Reagan is short, and out of all of the members of her family, she’s the one Alex most resembles, even if they are biologically related. She’s tiny in the same way that Alex is, and she’s seated in one corner of the old and comfortable couch, and Richard shifts uncomfortably near her, but he’s sitting here. With one hand on Richard’s cheekbones, she just says softly: “my aren’t you a handsome man? And with such a nice voice. I can see why our Alexandra likes you. Are you good to my granddaughter, young man?” 

Hoping that she’s the only one that can see the stricken look on Richard’s face (her grandmother is losing her sight and has been for the last decade) Alex just smiles and says quickly. “Yeah grandma, he is. Richard Strand is everything that I ever could have hoped for. And more.” It’s only partially a lie, and one that aches a bit as she leans down and presses her lips to the lily of the valley scented cheek. “Hi Grandma, sorry it took me so long to get over here. You know how these things are.” 

“I know, Alliebear. You hate them, you always did. Poor Richard he hates them too, I can tell.” Her voice is soft, but the light blue of her eyes shift towards the man as if she’s daring him to tell her different. Even if he does Elenaor wouldn’t believe him anyway. “But he’s a nice man to keep an old lady company.” 

“It was hardly a chore, Mrs. Reagan.” Richard’s voice is slightly stiff, and Alex can see the discomfort in it as much as she can hear it, and her grandmother scoffs. 

“Call me Grandma or Gran, Richard. Everyone else does. You’re family now. You’re gonna be here a good long time, because our Alliebear doesn’t let people she loves go. And I can tell your the same way with her. Anyone can hear the love in your voice, Richard.” Alex and Richard share a glance before there’s the sound of a fork clinking against glass. 

Champagne flutes are suddenly all around them, seemingly summoned from nowhere and Alex just blinks before she hears her father’s voice bursting out from somewhere close to the kitchen. The pride in it hurts, but Alex keeps her face light as she automatically reaches for Richard’s hand. “Now Alice and I just wanna thank you all for being here tonight, especially when you’re gonna be around tomorrow for our anniversary! But after a long time, too long if you ask her mother” there’s a light chorus of laughter before someone appears and puts glasses in her, Richard and Gran’s hands, “it’s been too long coming. But our little girl is getting married to a man who she loves, and we’re here to welcome him into our family. So welcome Richard, and congratulations to you both!” As her father raises his glass, Alex raises hers automatically, and she taps the rim of it first to Richard’s and then to her grandmother’s before she takes a small sip of chilled sparkling wine. 

“Kiss!” One person starts, and it becomes an interminable chorus, a chant fueled by joy and good food and alcohol. Looking helplessly to Richard, Alex doesn’t know what to do. It’s normal, it’s natural that people want the happy couple to do it, but she desperately wishes that they’d had the chance to kiss properly in the car before they’d needed to do it on a stage as if it were a performance. But then again, that’s what they were going to be doing for the foreseeable future, wasn't it? Moving to her feet, Richard follows, and Alex just leans in and presses her lips gently to his. It’s not really a kiss, just her lips meeting his while she balances on her toes holding a flute of cheap sparkling wine. 

But it still moves along her nerve endings, making her shiver, making her mouth drop open with want. It’s something of a reflex that Alex presses her lips to his own again, this time her lips parting and kissing him more deeply and ardently. The first kiss was theatre, what he felt like she needed to do. The second? No, the second was for her. It was three years of yearning and want from when she’d met him in his office until just now. As the kiss burned down her fingers and lower in her groin, Alex just moans softly. She can’t help it. Richard tastes like she’d always imagined that he would, warm and slightly tinged with smoke as if knowledge and all of the words that he says and doesn’t say are there pressed against his tongue. Perhaps the kiss would have been shorter and less ardent if Richard wasn’t kissing her back in the same sort of desperate way. Warmth becomes hot, and she can feel his fingers tangle into her hair, feel the cold of the glass brush against Alex’s cheek as he almost seems to desperately want to touch her cheek.

Applause comes, startling Alex from the kiss, leaving her to bolt away with swollen lips and crimson stained cheeks. Alex Reagan had just kissed Richard Strand and the world didn’t end. But in a lot of ways it did because Alex doesn’t know how she can go back to not kissing Richard now that she knows what kissing him is like. 

And she hopes that he doesn’t know how he can go back either.


	8. They lie there hand in hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the potluck, Richard and Alex don't deal with the kiss, but do navigate sleeping in only one bed and Richard Strand tries not to be so much himself about things and tries to be braver than he normally is while Alex expresses the reality of how much this situation is going to suck for her for the rest of their lives. (She thinks, anyway. This is a romcom after all.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this may be the longest fic that I've ever written in the shortest period of time! We're at chapter 13 in my doc now and I'm so glad that people are loving this as much as I am loving writing it. I'm actually about to be closing in on the finish line, because I can definitely see it round the bend. There's tons of tropes and angst and romcom stuff around the corner, and I hope you're all looking forward to reading it as much as I'm looking forward to you reading it!

Alex Reagan has kissed him. Alex Reagan has kissed him twice to a chorus of cheers and applause and as she pulls away, he can see the crimson in her cheeks and his fingers tangled into the mass of dark hair like he’d always imagined. Feeling far too hot, Richard is acutely aware of how the color in his own cheeks matches hers and he can’t help but be reminded of the last time that his cheeks were so red. It was when he’d met Coralee for the first time and he had just calmed a squalling Charlie in the green court outside the psychology building at Yale. She’s ten months old and teething, and his pinky finger is being gummed as he balances a book with the other three. Coralee said that she’d never seen a man look that good holding a baby and invited them both for coffee. Crimson and surprised, he’d accepted the invitation of the beautiful grad student who had torn his life into shreds. 

It had ended in heartbreak for so many people and if he did believe in some sort of absent father figure god, Richard would be praying that this didn’t go the same way. 

The party broke up quickly after this, and with the heat of Alex’s kiss still lingering on his lips, and with the brush of her fingers still present on his cheek, Richard goes through the motions of farewells and then the inevitable clean up. He and Alex don’t have the chance to speak with Alice bustling around the kitchen as he helps put away food and loading the dishwasher. But he can feel her near him like a tether, a lack that his body keeps searching for, the want there on his lips. 

He notices when she slips off to go upstairs and suddenly the remembrance of the single bed looms large in Richard’s mind. Not for the first time when it comes to Alex, Richard considers the cowardly way out. He could simply sit on the comfortable sofa and feign falling asleep there. The seats in his car recline, but even there he would be chased by the only specter that he’d ever possibly admit to being real (Richard Strand lies to everyone but to himself most of all): his feelings for Alex Reagan and the way that she smiles, the way that she laughs, the way that she can never really keep how she feels from her doe eyes or her voice and now of course the way that her mouth felt on his. 

In the end, Richard just sighs and bids his future father-in law good night secure in the knowledge that Alex has had enough time to do whatever she needs to do in order to get ready for bed. (Something that his mind both conjures intimately as well as informs him is entirely impractical for Alex, especially while in her parents' home.) Moving gingerly up the stairs there is no small part of Richard that hopes that Alex will have fallen asleep so that they don’t need to discuss their kiss. If they don’t discuss it then he wouldn’t feel the need to apologize for his reaction to it, something else that makes his cheeks burn. 

Some semblance of politeness causes him to lightly knock on the door before he opens it and when Richard enters, the scent of the lotion that Alex is rubbing into her arms breeches his nose and he finds himself inhaling lightly. As expected, Alex is tucked into the left side of the bed, and from where the quilt is resting on her lap he can see that she’s wearing some sort of novelty shirt and her hair is pulled back into a messy bun. Minus the makeup that Alex normally wore, he can see the shadows below her eyes and the thin sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose. Honestly this is perhaps the first time that Richard has seen Alex minus both for more than just a passing glance, and she takes his breath away more than he normally does. “Hey,” she just says softly. “Sorry I just wanted to…”

“Get ready for bed before I came up. I understand.” He replies just as softly. With some measure of embarrassment, Richard hefts his suitcase up onto the cedar chest at the end of the bed and unzips it, finding his shaving kit and pajamas tucked neatly on the top of his clothing tomorrow. He’s thankful that he at least packed something that was not a suit, even if he’s certain that Alex’s comments about wearing flannel tomorrow are going to be particularly pointed after their conversation earlier. Even he isn’t such a glutton for punishment that he’d attempt to go fly fishing in a three piece suit and polished oxfords. (Their little trip to the cabin where Sebastian Torres had been held has ruined his derby’s beyond recognition.) If nothing else, at least Danny had offered rubber boots for the fishing trip. 

Gesturing broadly to the en-suite (something he is in fact quite grateful for) Richard just awkwardly clears his throat. “I’ll just. Uh. Be a minute.”

“Sure.” Alex says and she’s coloring again. “I’ll be here.”

When it comes to changing, Richard takes an extraordinary amount of time. If it wasn’t so late he’d supplement what he was doing with a shower, but he doesn’t wish to disturb Alice or Danny and he’s well aware of the fact that he’s going to have a difficult enough time sleeping next to Alex that he shouldn’t create more of a cause. But still it’s twenty minutes before Richard opens the bathroom door in pajama pants and a faded Yale t-shirt, his face stinging from cold water and with mint on his mouth. While he’d been hoping (in vain but hoping nonetheless) that Alex would have been asleep when he’d returned to the room, instead he finds her laying down with returned glasses and her nose in some paperback. 

“Hey.” She says again softly. “Left you the right side.” And she had, along with opening the window a crack to allow the brisk late September air in. For a moment Richard just stands and watches her before he moves to slip into the right side next to her. Laying his head back on the pillow, the scent of Alex’s lotion is nearly overpowering but in a good way. A good way that makes Richard want to simply bury his face in the crook of her neck. 

Resisting said impulse is harder than Richard would like, but in the end he settles on something more general to ask her about. “What are you reading?”

“Jane Eyre. I left the book that I had been reading at home and this one was on my bookshelf. It was either that or some mystery and I think we’ve both had enough of that don’t you?”

Richard just snorts, he can’t help it. A younger woman in love with an asshole of an older man who has a crazy wife he keeps in the attic. If this isn’t a metaphor for his life at the moment he doesn’t know what is. Well, at least it’s not something haunted. He really couldn’t deal with that at the moment. 

“Shut up,” Alex replies, but in an amused tone. “It was just the first one I grabbed. I’m not supposed to be on my phone before bed but I need to do something to occupy my brain for twenty minutes before I try and sleep.” Checking her watch, Alex just folds the corner down in the well-loved book (something that makes the bibliophile in Richard Strand cringe on a visceral level) before she turns out the light. 

But not before Richard catches sight of the shirt that she’s wearing in its entirety. It’s black and seems to have some sort of upside down pentacle on it, and there’s writing on it. Somewhat baffled Richard just asks quickly: “Alex Reagan are you seriously wearing a shirt that says ‘_I’m just here for the cult stuff?!_”

He can feel her coloring in the darkened room, heat fusing in the slight distance between them. “Shut up.” Twice in a conversation: a record for Alex. “It’s from a show. Nic gave it to me for an early birthday present and it was the only appropriate clean thing I could grab for pajamas!” Richard doesn’t respond because her use of the word ‘inappropriate’ conjures up all sorts of images of things that would not be appropriate with him in her parents' home and he needs to bite down on a sigh of that thought. So he doesn’t reply other than to cover the sigh he wants to give with his slightly annoyed one. 

Of course Nicodemus Silver would think it _hilarious_ to give his friend who is currently probably being hunted (and most certainly being watched) by a cult a shirt like that. 

The silence in the air other than their breathing is damned near absolute and for two people who live in a city that’s normally crawling with life at all hours, Richard is certain that Alex finds it just as oppressive as he does. Which is perhaps the reason that he breaks the silence with a soft question rather than how Alex would normally be the one to ask it. “Are you okay?” It’s a question that Richard means, and that he needs the answer to. Being here with Alex as she is right now reminds Richard too much of living with a shade of her—as if there’s a part of who she is outside of this place that’s missing. 

He doesn’t like it one damned bit. 

After a moment, Alex just sighs and says “yeah. I mean. Being here is weird. And definitely harder than I thought it was going to be. I really didn’t expect that it would be this hard.” Alex’s voice is soft and somewhat distant in the dark, and without realizing it, Richard’s hand reaches for hers and wraps around it as she speaks again, squeezing his hand in return. “I guess you can’t go home again or something, right? How does that old song go?” 

“Alex.” Richard says her name softly, and she just sighs loudly, breaking some of the fragile intimacy in the dark. 

“I know you think that I’m at best morally ambiguous, but I really hate lying and keeping secrets from the people I care about. Even last year when I was investigating everything with Bobby Maimes and Cheryl, I hated keeping them from you. And now I’m going to need to spend the rest of my life doing it with everyone I care about. It _sucks_. It’s hard and it sucks and I hate it, but I know that I need to do it.” 

For a moment, he’s silent. This is something that Richard tries very hard to forget about Alex Reagan. Yes, she’s ambitious and driven and morally flexible and can act in a manner that Ruby deems to be ‘shady’ in a tone of voice that is more assuredly not a compliment (save for the times it is. But those are reserved for the times when she’s investigating something for Richard’s benefit) but she’s also someone who cares deeply for people. And the world. And for him. For all of the edges that Alex possesses, at the deepest part of her core, she’s someone who is soft. She’s someone who cares with her whole being because she doesn’t know how not to. Maybe this was a terrible idea. 

“We don’t have to do this, you know.” He just days after a very long minute, trying to wrap armor around his heart to stave off some of the bleeding. For Richard, it should have been easy for him to do. He’s been doing it for twenty years. But it’s not and the thought of losing Alex is a toothache in his chest. But maybe he can be a better man. Not a good one, certainly not but a better one than he wants to be right now. “We can break up tomorrow. You can move home and just leave the black tapes behind.” _Leave me behind_, he doesn’t say and Richard dearly hopes that she doesn’t hear it in his voice. “Find a simpler job with less of how did you put it? Oh yes, ‘an apocalyptic sense of urgency.’”__

_ _Richard had been hoping for her laugh, but he’s surprised by how firm and serious that Alex is. “No.” The single word comes immediately and firmly in the way that states that she’s absolutely not going to change her mind about it. “I can’t. I won’t.” But there are many things in her voice that Alex’s words don’t convey and for a moment Richard Strand dares to hope, but she’s resolutely silent on the matter and his pride won’t let him be anything but it. _ _

_ _Maybe she was reading the wrong damned book. _ _

_ _Silence stretches between them and neither of them move or speak. They do not release the other’s hands before Richard can’t help but to ask in order to at least change the subject from all of the things that neither of them are saying. “So what happened to Jane’s grandmother’s bowl from the old country?”_ _

_ _As he hoped it would, the question makes Alex just laugh softly. “Jane tried to turn it into a bong when we were sixteen. It shattered right down the damned middle. You should have seen her desperately trying to get the pot and the burn marks out of it before her mother saw. In the end she blamed it on ghosts.”_ _

_ _Richard just snorts for a moment, but he doesn’t ask Alex about what happens with Jane now. He knows that she’s not going to tell Jane’s mother about it despite what she might have threatened. No, Alex is too good of a person and a friend for that. Besides, it’s not like this is something that would be on the show and Alex Reagan doesn’t feel the need to be accountable to her audience for something like that. Alex tells him more stories as the time stretches on between them in the dark with their hands closed together. She tells him about her grandparents and how she was a rebellious teen. She tells him about meeting Nic in college and somewhere in the middle of the truly awkward time that he tried to hit on her, Alex’s voice drops out and her breath becomes even as she falls asleep. Just listening to her breathe, Richard is aware of the fact that this is perhaps the most that she’s ever talked about herself to him without asking a question in return. Whatever childhood ghosts may haunt her here, he is at the very least grateful for that. As Richard can feel his own eyes becoming heavy, he just breathes so very softly so as not to wake her up: “good night, Alex. I know you probably won’t believe it, but I love you. I have for such a long time.” The only reply from her is a soft answering sigh that he wished meant that she loves him in return. _ _

_ _It’s a falsity and he knows it, but he can’t can’t help but wish it with all his heart. Richard wishes he was a better man, a braver man who could have asked her about the second kiss between them. But he didn’t, and he knows that he won’t. Instead it will just be one thing more in the moat surrounding them that’s full of all of the things that neither of them put words too. _At least,_ Richard thinks quickly, _that’s normal too.__ _

_ _Richard doesn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, but when he wakes up, there’s a soft scent all around him and he’s warm in ways that he normally doesn’t allow himself to be. All too often, Richard Strand spends his time sleeping surrounded by the ghosts in his dreams and he never wakes feeling this comfortable. The world is soft here, and it takes him a long moment to realize the reason why the world is so soft and warm. _ _

_ _Richard Strand has woken up curled in the embrace of one Alex Reagan she’s still asleep and still and peaceful somehow with her cheek against his chest. One of her legs is thrown over his, as if it’s not enough to simply have her arms and face on him and he’s somehow not surprised to realize that his arms are wrapped around her in a tight embrace as if even unconsciously he can’t bare to let go of her. It’s not something that he wants to think on as he just watches her sleep for a moment. _ _

_ _Alex Reagan is always beautiful to him and she and her energy damn near took his breath away the first time he’d met her. It had been old hat to fall into pea-cocking for reporters, giving them his normal speel about how much beauty there is in the world and curing aging. But where Alex has really shown and the first time he’d considered kissing her was when she refused to be taken in by his fancy suit and charisma and words and had actually walked away from him to look at the tapes as if she’d known how rehearsed it was. It was that consideration of how warm her mouth would be, what Alex’s hair might feel like below his fingers that had been just as much a part of cutting the interview short as the fact that she’d found the other tapes had been. _ _

_ _The attraction had only grown as time had gone on, but every time Richard tried to run from it, Alex had pulled him back. When there was the six months he was away from her, he’d been running from his affection just as much as he’d been running toward the idea of finding his missing wife. But Alex came and her…. _Alexness_ didn’t change in the face of flannel and beard and teeth and he’d known he was lost as soon as he’d heard her voice in his office as he hid in his chair in the dark hoping that she would just go away. _ _

_ _But Alex didn’t go away. Even with her nightmares and the lack of sleep and recklessness she was still there with the occasional smile when Richard needed it, tea or food when he ignored the calls of his body and it had been her more than anything else that had led him back to sanity. At the time he’d told himself (lied to himself) that the connection between them was enough and that he’d never allow it go further. Now watching Alex in repose, it’s like a still life waiting to return to life but the beauty is there in the moment. _ _

_ _Besides, when was the last time he’d actually slept a full six hours without a nightmare of something interrupting. Perhaps Alex felt the same way because she certainly would have woken him if she’d had the night terrors that had plagued her before. But the mention of time and the accompanying knock reminded him of what he was supposed to be doing, and Richard automatically starts to carefully untangle himself from the tiny form of Alex Reagan which seems so large somehow right now. It’s a weight that Richard knows only exists in his heart but he can’t help dotting a single kiss on her forehead and telling her to sleep before he leaves the warmth of the bed and starts to head out to the meeting with his new father-in-law._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a small poll because I'm torn. Do people want a chapter with the actual ICE interview? Because I'm debating it right now! Also of course Alex Reagan is wearing a BFU shirt. She can't not be! (Hey PB and Tmiles don't actually care about timing on the show so why should I?) Comments and kudos are life and I am honestly grateful for every single one!


	9. You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After having her first good night of sleep in years, Alex Reagan gets to deal with Alice Reagan's force of nature head on. It goes about as well as you expect.

There was something definitely wrong when Alex woke up. For starters, it was the fact that the sun was peeking through the curtains like tiny golden laser beams. Back home, Alex has learned early on in her sleeping problems to make sure that she had black out curtains on the off chance that she did manage to not be awake before the sun rose. But here it was, brightening the world behind Alex’s eyelids and turning her world crimson. 

Even before she opened her eyes, there was the second sign that something was wrong. All around her she could smell Richard. It was warm and smelled of old books, nice aftershave and ever so slightly of bourbon. Okay the last bit may have just been her associating it from kissing him the night prior, but it was still there. Checking her phone on the nightstand, Alex just yelps quickly. It’s already nine am and she’s got entirely too much to do to sleep this long. She _never sleeps this long_. Groaning, Alex just rolls onto Richard’s side of the bed before inhaling deeply, pressing her face into the pillow as hard as she can before she can hear her mom yelling for. 

As a rule, Alice Reagan never let her daughter sleep past nine no matter how late she’d been up the night before. Frowning and groaning again, Alex reluctantly throws off the blankets before her mother can decide she needs to be shaken awake. “Coming. I’m coming.” The words are yelled and Alex is quite glad that Richard is out even if she wishes that her dad was home. Things were always easier when her dad was home. Brushing her teeth and hair and washing her face before she went downstairs, Alex just braces before she enters the kitchen. 

She really should have taken the time to put on makeup and she knows that even before her mother just gasps loudly. “Alexandra I thought you said your sleep was improving!”

“It _is improving_. I just didn’t sleep much last night.” 

Alice just gives Alex the ‘I am your mother and not an idiot’ look that so many people in her life happen to have and Alex just sighs in response. “They’re getting better, Mom. I promise. It’s not like last year. Really.”

And then she takes a slug of the overdone coffee her mother placed in front of her and grimaces. She can’t help it, it's too early in the morning to feign that bad coffee is good. Especially if it’s her first cup. Thankfully her mother is bustling around and by the time that she sets a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Alex she’s managed to recover enough to take a second sip. Honestly she’s grateful for that because her mother always seems to forget that Alex prefers pancakes to eggs. At least the bacon is good and on the edge of burnt that Alex likes best. She just wishes that there wasn’t part of her brain that treacherously reminds her that Richard (who up til now has just been her friend and work partner) knows that she vastly prefers pancakes to eggs, something that her mother never seems to remember. 

Pushing the congealed eggs around her plate with her fork (they were runny when her mother had made them, there’s no doubt about that which honestly is even more of a sin to Alex than their appearance because if there’s something that she hates worse than eggs it’s _runny eggs_) Alex just frowns a bit before she reaches for a piece of toast and nibbles on that slowly. Her stomach is rolling and she knows it’s a combination of the eggs, the bourbon from last night and the shrewd look that her mother gives her more than anything else. 

In some ways it definitely feels like the morning after her parents caught her with Jane and Alex can’t help but feel a little resentful of that. 

“So,” Alice begins casually, and Alex is well aware of the fact that it’s _far too casual_ of a tone of voice for the question that she’s being asked. “Last night you said that you two were going to be married soon. Is there some reason for that, Alex?”

More than anything Alex wishes that she had the sort of relationship with her mother that would mean that she could explain about the deportation and Warren and everything else but she’s more than a little aware of a few things. First her mother would simply freak out about this and want her to come home. Second, there's a good chance that her mother might turn them in herself if it would mean that Alex as home. And third, the third is most worrisome: her mother would probably think that she was losing it like her birth mother had. 

The fear of losing it like her birth mother had is an old one, ever since Alex had turned eighteen and discovered the reason that she’d been placed up for adoption in the first place. Online, Alex Reagan had seen herself described as an ableist (among other things) for her fear of mental hospitals. But the fear is a real one because of the specter of her birth mother. Alex’s birth mother had spent a fair amount of time in and out of institutions in the seventies, and the things that eighteen year old Alex had learned about them had instilled the fear that still plagued the back of her mind now: that someday it might happen to her too. Of course it’s not something that she’s shared with anyone other than Dr. Bernier in a session she chose not to record, but that’s besides the point. 

So, instead Alex Reagan lies to her mother. She lies because she needs too and because she doesn’t have another choice. “The only reason is because we feel like it’s been long enough apart for us, Mom. There’s nothing else going on.” From the look on her mother’s face, Alice doesn’t believe her, but there’s nothing that Alex can do about it. So instead she relies on another good Reagan tactic: distraction. 

“But Richard and I talked about it. We’re going to have the ceremony here in the church. Maybe I’ll talk to Father Mike about it tonight.”

“Isn’t Richard an atheist?” Alive doesn’t quite say the word like it’s dirty but it’s close enough. Which makes Alex sigh. It’s hard to think of an atheist being something bad when Alex is _well aware_ of things that are far worse in this world. 

“Yes. But. He agreed anyway.” Alex doesn’t need to add ‘because it’s what you want’ but she doesn’t need too. 

“I don’t know if Father Mike would agree to that. Besides is Richard even Catholic? Was he confirmed?”

“I.” Alex just pauses because for all her dossier of knowledge on Richard Strand that never came up. “I don’t know honestly.”

“Alex, was he even baptized?”

“Mom really?” Alex just huffs the words quickly her eyes rolling. “If he wasn’t then he wasn’t. I’m not going to ask him to commit to something insane like this if he wasn’t. We just will get married somewhere else.” Like a courthouse she adds in her head because honestly Alex herself is just thinking it’s an idea that sounds better and better the longer this goes on. Then they can just do it at home and things can go on as normal. 

Well as normal as it can be with the two of them married and living together. Which is a whole other thing that they’re going to need to navigate. Which of course makes her sigh. 

“Alexandra don’t get huffy with me! It’s a simple question! How can you marry a man if you don’t even know that?!”

“It’s not like it ever has come up, Mother! I know he’s an atheist and that’s what matters. He was willing to have a church ceremony—_we both were_\-- in order to make you happy and if that’s not good enough for you then that’s not good enough. I’m going to marry him and I don’t care if it’s at Saint Peter’s or at the Seattle courthouse or even if it’s in Vegas!”

“Alexandra!”

“No, Mom you always do this. _Nothing is ever enough_. I say I’ll get married in a church and suddenly you’re talking about baptisms and confirmations and I know you and your next thing is going to be asking Richard to convert and I won’t do it. I’m not going to ask him to change for me. I don’t need him to. I love him just as he is.” Leaving her breakfast and coffee mostly untouched, Alex just rises from the table. “I’ve got to go. I need to meet Aunt Rita at the hall. I’m late.”

“Alex we’re not done discussing this!”

“Yes.” Alex says quickly. “We are.”

In her haste to get out of the house, Alex doesn’t bother to shower. Instead she just throws on her jeans and leaves her shirt as it is. Grabbing her purse and her phone, Alex just thanks fuck that Richard didn’t ask for his keys back last night and they’re in the coat pocket where she left them. The very last thing that she wants is to be trapped at the mercy of needing a ride from her mother. Maybe Richard knew that. Honestly it wouldn’t surprise her if he did. 

Peeling out of the driveway at a speed that is ill advised seems entirely too much like teenage angst for her taste, but Alex doesn’t slow down until she reaches the village center. Running through the Starbucks drive thru eats up more of her time but she’s not stupid enough to attempt to do anything without some proper coffee (or as close to proper coffee as the village gets) seems like a suicide mission when she knows she’s going to need to deal with more family bullshit. So she grabs two coffees, one iced so she can just slam it and one normal for while she’s decorating and she does grab food too, perhaps out of the concession to the look that she knows Richard would give her if she _didn’t_. 

Honestly for someone who’s so bad at eating Richard Strand is a complete fucking hypocrite about this sort of thing. 

Alex doesn’t even realize that she’d been crying until she parks and grabs her makeup bag from her purse. Fuck, she hates that her mother can still do this to her. There’s nothing that can be done about her crimson eyes, but a makeup wipe takes care of the tear streaks and her normal routine takes care of the bags and circles below her eyes. Still, Alex should have known better when she’s carrying the boxes into the hall and her aunt sees her. 

“Oh baby,” aunt Rita’s voice is a balm that Alex desperately needs, and when she sets the boxes on a table already draped in linen it’s only a second before Rita’s warm arms wrap around her. For most of Alex’s life, she’s always been closer with her mother’s sister than her mom herself and this too feels familiar especially when her aunt asks “what did your mom do now?” It’s funny, ninety percent of the time when she’s upset now, Nic or someone else asks what _Richard_ had done. It’s weird to draw the line between him and her mother, but Alex’s brain does it anyway. 

“You know Mom.” Alex hates how shaky her voice is. “Give her an inch and she’s gonna take a mile.” Alex isn’t an idiot and she knows that people say the same about her but it’s a behavior that she’s learned more than anything else. “I told her Richard and I agreed that we would be married in a church but then she starts talking about if he’s Catholic and everything else.”

Rita is silent for a moment as she keeps hugging her niece but then she asks softly. “He said he’d get married in a church? He must really love you, baby.” Alex doesn’t know what to say to that, because she knows that her aunt _does_ listen to the show so she’s aware of how Richard is in ways that her mother isn’t. 

“He said that he would hardly be the first groom to acquiesce to what his new in laws would want.” Is she ignoring what her aunt said about Richard loving her? Entirely. She can’t even think about that right now.

“Well, I suppose that’s true but it’s also a sacrifice for him. You shouldn’t have to ask him to do anything else.”

“I’m not going to. I mean. He’s doing enough already.” Alex doesn’t mean to say it, but the truth is pressing on her in ways that it always does and it comes out anyway. 

“Sit down, Alex. I think you better tell me what’s really going on. It’s gonna eat you up if you don’t.”

Rita is right. Rita is honesty always right about this sort of thing. Ever since Alex was a little girl, Rita has been the one who had known when she was putting on a mask, when things were actually bad. Really bad between her and her mother. Out of anyone, her aunt was the only one who had been aware of her actual feelings for Richard Strand even before all of this happened. She’d guessed and Alex had always found it difficult to lie to Rita, especially in the face of her eyes and her soft voice. So, that’s the reason that Alex sits and does something that she knows that she really probably shouldn’t do. But her voice is soft when she begins, “so you know I went to Turkey…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just feel I need to remind folks of what we know in canon about Alex's mother: she asks Alex when she's going to be married every Sunday and she's religious! Hopefully this doesn't feel too far out of field! Comments and kudos are life and give me happy feels!


	10. And I have always buried them deep beneath the ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard goes on the fishing trip with Alex's father and he's listened to the show. Detective Reagan most assuredly has some hard questions for Richard Strand to answer and more than a few things to call him out on.
> 
> And gives him more than a little bit of the shovel talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the response to this! I am very pleased to announce that it's definitely finished and it's reached almost 44k words when everything is said and done! I love all of the comments and kudos, and they've definitely helped with me slamming through this so quickly. 
> 
> I'll be posting the remaining chapters over the next couple of weeks!

Honestly Richard doesn’t know what he expected from this fishing outing with Alex’s father. He doesn’t know what to expect of Danny Reagan either. But when he’d come down the stairs the man had given him a smile and handed him a cup of tea and a pair of waders. He was already dressed in a set and gestured Richard towards a spare coat so that he didn’t need a jacket. With something of a relief, he took all three and then followed his future father-in-law out to the waiting pick up truck. 

Unlike Alex, he can tell Danny is a morning person from the way that he sings along with the radio but he doesn’t initiate conversation until Richard is finished with his tea. It’s something that Richard had thought he was absurdly grateful for until the question came. Oh, he doesn’t think Danny meant for it to be offensive but it places Richard on guard nonetheless. “So, did your father ever take you fishing?”

“No.” Despite wanting to leave it at that as he would with Alex, he feels the need to add more. “My father was never really someone who put much stock in outdoor activities.” _Or_, he adds mentally, _the care and wellbeing of his children beyond how I might somehow fit in with his work_. 

Somewhat infuriatingly, Danny just responds with “I see.” The silence stretches out between them for a very long moment before he adds, “then we’ll go over the basics when we get out there then. We’ve got about five more minutes driving and then a fifteen minute walk. But don’t worry, it’s an easy one.” Something else bristles in Richard at that reassurance and he needs to bite down on the response that he wants to give while the silence stretches between them. He can’t help but notice that Alex most certainly got her driving skills (and lead foot) from her father. 

The two men had been walking for approximately eight minutes (not that Richard’s counting.) He’s absolutely counting and paying attention to the route that they seem to be following out of habit. Then Danny speaks again. “There’s a lot of woods around here. Deep holes. Bears. That sort of thing.” Somehow to Richard it feels almost like a threat even though it’s spoken very mildly. The threat however is far more explicit in the next sentences Danny speaks: “Did Alex ever tell you I was a cop for thirty years? The last ten I was a detective first in major crimes then in homicide. You’d be amazed what you’d learn working in them.” 

Ruby during one of her many fortes into attempting to explain pop culture had informed him of something called ‘the shovel talk’ and there is no doubt in his mind that given her explanation that is what Danny Reagan is doing now. “She has mentioned it, yes.” Richard is using the bland Dr. Strand tones now, the steel armor as familiar as breathing despite the fact that he’s currently lacking any outward trappings of that persona. But it’s enough, he hopes to hide the internal panic that’s currently singing through his veins. 

It’s certainly not a surprise to those familiar with the history of Richard Strand (and a great many people currently do judging by how Nicodemus was last crowing over the download numbers for the show) that Richard has a problem with the police. The seeds of his mistrust of them had been sown when he became the prime suspect in Bobby Maimes’ murder after he’d lead Wayne and everyone else to the boy’s body. Having spent hours cuffed in an interview room before his father and his attorney could get to him, Richard got to experience first hand just how badly prepared the police were for a murder investigation through the vicious but clumsy six hour integration that he’d suffered through. 

The problem only grew when Richard was a man and had to endure worse when his wife was missing. To say that Richard Strand hates the police is an understatement—and now those feelings are bubbling up once more thanks to all of this. 

But Danny says something that he doesn’t expect even though perhaps Richard should have. “Alice doesn’t listen to the show. She’s not a fan of scary things or of listening to Alex make poor decision after poor decision. But I do listen because I support my daughter in things that I know are probably going to be terrible for her.” It’s not that Richard doesn’t agree with the sentiment that he would be terrible for Alex—on the contrary he does for a multitude of reasonings that he’s listed over and over again in his mind during their tenure together. 

Alex is too young for him. Alex believes in things that she shouldn’t. Alex is a weakness that he has now on full display even before his impulsive decision to propose. Love, as his father always said, is a weakness. So is having a soft heart. Alex Reagan is nothing if she’s not a soft heart. 

Perhaps it makes Richard soft hearted in turn but he loves her and he is _absolutely not going to give her up for anything_. Not even for a policeman father in law who is telling him how well he could arrange an accident and leave Richard for dead out here in the woods. 

But before Richard can speak any of that, Danny stares at him with flinty eyes looking every inch the formidable detective that he is. “So Richard what are your intentions towards my daughter? You repeatedly have said that you love your wife very much. Where does that leave my daughter when this is all said and done?”

Fumbling for his words, Richard feels every inch the awkward teenager sitting in that interrogation room mixed with the time that he stood, lanky and stuttering trying to ask Kathy Owens out for prom in front of her mother. The sensation of the flashback is entirely unwelcome and it sharpens edges he knows needs to be smooth. But even that can’t keep the bite from his tone. “Mr. Reagan if you have listened to the show than you are certainly aware of the circumstances surrounding my wife’s disappearance and her subsequent reappearance in my life. You are aware of how she was never the woman who’s I had thought she was. The woman I loved was an illusion created to entice me. She was never real and I have mourned my illusions of her for twenty years. What she did cost me my family, my reputation both personally and professionally and _my daughter_.” Richard’s words are clipped and sharp, the anger behind them palpable. “When this is over, however it ends, it doesn’t end with a triumphant return of my wife to my life. While I was still in Italy with Charlie, I began the legal proceedings for divorce. Coralee returned the papers to me along with the rings I had given her with nothing even resembling a note or an explanation. Yes, I loved my wife. But I love Alex more.”

“That’s all very well, Richard but you keep hurting her over and over. You ignore that hurt. I don’t know how you can turn off your heart to do it but I can hear my little girl’s heart breaking in her words. You never see how she is when you disappear on her. You never see how it makes her look and act. Alex won’t say anything because she’s Alex and a part of her believed that she deserves it. She’d never admit it, of course but she does. Alex has always had a problem with abandonment. A problem I believe you share and I have sympathy for. But you’ve never seen my little girl be a ghost because something like this has happened to her. You’ve never seen her crying and saying that the person who hurt her was right for doing it. Alex is a strong woman. She’s so damned strong and she bares her scars and turns them into something beautiful. But she has them and you just pick them open without caring for the aftermath.”

For a moment Richard doesn’t know what to say. He is in the unenviable position of both not being stupid and also being very stupid when it comes to some things. When it comes to Alex most definitely Richard Strand is certainly at his most stupid. The entire charade that the two of them are involved in right now proves that so conclusively even _he_ can’t deny it. Richard, for his vast vocabulary on doubt simply lacks the ability to put things into proper words. The way to inform Alex’s father that part of the reason that he hurt Alex, that he ignores her hurts is because he cares for her. Because he’s cared for her for far longer than he should. Leaving hasn’t been _only_ because he was angry and hurt. Or at least they weren’t the only reasons for his multiple disappearances and disappointments for Alex—they were also a result of her worming her way into the coldness of her heart and starting to thaw the ice of Dr. Strand. 

He most assuredly doesn’t wish to mention the more carnal and devious ways that Alex Reagan had worked into Richard Strand’s more base thoughts. 

It was the reason that he’d tried to pull away in season one before Alex had brought him her pet murderer. Perhaps the reminder of hearing Coralee’s voice had helped but it certainly wasn’t the main reason. _Podcast Chopped_ (whatever the hell _that_ was) and debating a creationist on CNN we’re simply convenient excuses on a morning when he’d woken in his cold Chicago bed from a particularly heated dream involving Alex sharing it. The dream hadn’t been a new one (Alex Reagan is a particularly attractive woman in more ways than one) but it had been the first time that dream Alex had informed her that she loved him. For as good as the rest of the dream had been, that had been the best and most important part. 

And the most terrifying part had been the way that he had told her that he loved her in return in the dream. Richard had said it and realized that he’d _meant_ it and that had terrified him more than anything. So, he had called her to sever their connection in the most bastard way that he could. Of course it meant that for the next several days until he ignored it in favor of Simon, Ruby had been ready to take her bat to _his_ knees because he had, as she’d put it ‘turned up his bastard level to a thousand.’ Richard can’t deny it—it had been the first time he realized his feelings for Alex weren’t conducive to his life but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. No, that was happening right now as Danny Reagan ignores him in favor of setting up the fishing poles. 

What is it about the Reagans ignoring him when he wants their attention?!

“Mr. Reagan.” Richard is attempting to ignore the bite with which he wants to refer to the man as ‘detective’ “I…”

Danny just cuts him off in the easiest way possible. “You ignore the way that she hurts. You ignored the way that she wasn’t sleeping. You ignored the way that she felt about you. It was there in her voice, in the way that she went to Chicago to make sure you were alright. You ignored everything that Alex did right to focus on your own pain. You come off as a very selfish man and a liar. Are you lying about loving my daughter?”

As a man who professes to search for truth being called a liar both takes over his sense of identity and hurts him in a way that it shouldn’t. Richard knows he is one but to have someone say it to his face is an entirely different matter. When Alex was in Turkey and he _missed her_, he listened to the show. All of it. The pieces of it that were painful (Tannis, Alex’s unfortunate way of referring to Thomas Warren, the way she thought he might have killed Coralee, Cheryl, the way that she ripped the painful and sharp pieces of his past and put them on display) were almost a form of penance for Richard. It was a thought that had become more and more pronounced with her sleep notes, her descent into paranoia and the frightful certainty that she was going to die as a result of the unsound and her association with him. That had been painful and although he had wanted to throw his phone at other points, those sleepnotes he’d listened too over and over, letting each one cut into his heart. He _had_ ignored that as Richard licked his wounds and considered ending their association as permanently as he could. 

But Richard also knew that he loves her. He knows that he could never do that. So instead he hurt her, trying to use that to make her to push him away. As always, Richard had underestimated Alex Reagan and her own determination _not_ to be pushed out. He loves her for that as much as he wishes that he could hate her for it. So instead, he pushed the shield of Coralee with all of her bards and his hurt between them. One step forward, three steps back and the entire time they keep dancing around all of the things that neither of them say for all of their use of words. 

“I love Alex.” The words come forcefully. “_That is not and never has been a lie_.” _Even when it should have been_, he adds internally. Even when it should be now. “I am not an easy man to love, Mr. Reagan. I never have been. You know my history. I have been cruel to her. I have tried to push her away in every way that I could have. But you also know Alex. You know her equal determination to never be pushed away. I am attempting to make up for what I have done to her in the best way that I know how. If that isn’t enough for you” _or her_, he adds but Richard doesn’t say it aloud, even if knows Alex doesn’t blame him for that. “Then I am uncertain what else I can say to set your mind at ease.”

Danny Reagan just looks at him with an appraising stare that is so reminiscent of Alex’s that it’s _painful_ but Richard doesn’t look away from the older man’s gaze. He isn’t at all certain what to expect for a response but he does expect _something_ from Danny. Instead what he gets is handed a fishing pole with a fly lure on it. And casting lessons. And for them to fish for several hours without saying anything. 

Richard being Richard tried of course, but each time he opened his mouth, Danny just shoved him and pointed to the fish. Honestly, he needed to give it to Danny, the man was good at this, and he reminded Richard of Alex in ways that were painful as hell. Every time that Danny caught a fish, he carefully removed the lure and thanked the fish before letting it go. It strikes Richard as something that Alex would do and it’s easy to see her doing it in his mind’s eye. Younger, and with that little pleased smile that he doesn’t even think she knows that she makes on her lips before she carefully releases the fish back into the water. Something in his heart clenches, and his jaw squares. 

In five hours he doesn’t catch a single fucking fish. No matter what Danny tells him to do. The ability to fish alludes him as much as his guilt about Alex dogs every cast that he makes. Honestly, he is relieved beyond measure when Danny announces that they should head back. Despite the care that Richard took in following Danny into the stream where they were fishing, his thoughts are too persist to do so now. Which is probably why he misses an obvious low-hanging branch. Before he can grab anything to right himself, Richard just ends up falling forward into a truly impressively deep mud pile. An already low mood sinks even lower as Richard can heat Danny laughing softly at him before he offers his future son-in-law an unseen hand to help him up. 

The hand is unseen for multiple reasons. The first reason is that his glasses had swanned off to some unfindable place in the mud and brush. The second reason is somehow more terrible and embarrassing than the first: Richard Strand who presses his pajamas when he’s not in full on conspiracy theory mode is _covered in mud_. Every one of his seventy-three inches is _coated_ in it. Gathering the muck from his eyes does nothing to bring the world back into focus, and despite several minutes of searching, Richard Strand needs to be lead, sans glasses through the woods and to the truck. Thankfully Danny doesn’t breech the silence between them once he starts the car: even Richard’s prideful control wouldn’t have been able to stop him from snapping if he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy the image of Richard I-totally-hiked-in-the-woods-in-a-suit-for-a-woman-I-totally-don't-love Strand covered in mud!


	11. Dig them up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is inevitable that when two characters both are missing their glasses and one is muddy and the other is naked, they will completely end up on top of one another. Of course when those characters are Alex Reagan and Richard Strand, it goes about as well as you can expect. Especially when Strand is very Strand about the whole thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your comments and kudos! You'll never know what they mean to me. More often than not with such a tiny fandom I feel a bit like I'm writing to an audience of one (my beloved Katie) and it feels like a bit of an echo chamber. You guys make it all worth it. And hey, this story is totally done and the next chapters will be posted over the next couple of weeks or so!

Confessing to her aunt had done wondrous things for Alex’s mood honestly. The food and caffeine had helped, of course but it was Rita’s calm acceptance, promise to keep the secret (and Alex knows that she will to her grave. Auntie Rita has always been Alex’s secret keeper and she does the job better than anyone else Alex knows) and offering reassurances that all of this wasn’t that bad that had helped the most. By the time the caterers had shown up to get started, the hall was decked out in gold and white and balloons. It looked lovely and Alex was proud of the work that they’d accomplished. Of course, it had meant that her time for getting ready for the party was shorter, but that also minimizes the opportunity for her mother to start arguing with her again. 

Stopping by Starbucks for the second time today, Alex orders her afternoon drink and grabs Richard his customary afternoon tea order as well. Seeing as it’s still a while before dinner, she grabs them brownies as well. Chocolate always helps Richard (and Alex honestly but she’s not going to admit that) when he’s in a bad mood and she’s under no illusions about how his outing with her father probably went. Hopefully he’s still at the house, and that he’s not ordered an Uber and left her to deal with all of this herself. Well, she’s mostly sure that Richard wouldn’t, but she’s definitely been wrong before. 

Her father’s truck is still gone when Alex parks Richard’s car in the driveway and she balances the coffee tray and bag as she digs her parents’ keys from her pocket. Despite the elevated sense of her mood, Alex still steels herself before she opens the door. Thankfully, she can hear the shower running in her parents’ bathroom before she bolts quickly up the stairs, taking pains to avoid the squeaky space on the third step so that her mom isn’t alerted to her being home. Just setting the tray down on the nightstand, Alex quickly decides to shower so that she can start getting ready before Richard gets back. Of all of the men she knows, Richard Strand is the one who takes the longest to get ready, and that way he can shower while she’s doing her hair and her makeup in the bedroom proper. 

Heading into the bathroom and turning the water on (the house is old and it takes a while for the pressure to build up, especially with the other shower going), Alex just strips for the shower and starts to get into it before she realizes that she’s left her shampoo and conditioner and body wash in her luggage. Wrapping herself in a towel just in case her mother decided to come up to continue their fight, Alex just heads glasses-less out into the main body of her room. She’s not paying attention to anything which is why she runs straight into something tall and solid and smelling decidedly like fishing and _mud_. 

Richard just swears loudly as he slips and falls backwards, his arms reflexively wrapping around the woman who has smacked her face into the mud on his chest. His back meets the floor and the wind is knocked out of him, and the effect only doubles when Alex’s body lands on his stomach and chest. “Why are you muddy?!” The words are a little more than a screech as she feels his hands scrambling over what little remains of the towel wrapped around her, and Alex can feel his fingers at her hips as he tries to maneuver her off of him. 

“Why are you naked?” The words are hissed back in anger, and Alex is pretty sure that it’s not a consideration for her parents downstairs that is the reason for his tone. Clumsy, Alex attempts to remove both herself and mud from her face at once, and both just lead to her ending up on the floor next to him. 

“Are you okay?” Alex asks quickly, her eyes on him as he tries to pull himself up into a seated position. 

“Does any of this look like I am remotely okay?” Yes, that’s a yell and Alex can hear running footsteps up the flight of stairs. Without knocking her father throws the door open. 

“Are you—“ the words are stolen by the scene apparently, and Alex is at least relieved the smallest bit by the way that her dad at least managed to shut the door before he dissolved into laughter. Given the absolute absurdity of the scene, Alex can’t help but to dissolve in laughter as well. Especially now that she’s close enough to see the look on Richard’s gray-covered face. 

“Yes, because laughing at the situation is going to help it immensely.” He just snaps the words at her and it just makes Alex laugh harder. “If you’d like to do something to actually help, you could go into my suitcase and find my spare pair of glasses.” As Alex moves closer to him to get some leverage to get up, he adds sharply. “And put some fucking clothes on!”

The laughter dies on Alex’s face in the face of that voice, and her mirth just drains out of her as her face flushes. Of course Richard would know just what to say to make the situation worse. Despite all of the assurances that her aunt had given her that he loves her, and how anyone who listened to the show would be able to hear it, the thoughts chill now. Of course he wouldn’t actually want to see her naked. Seeing her naked would mean showing vulnerability and god knows that Richard Strand could never do that unless it was on his own fucking terms. Grabbing the towel from where it had dropped, Alex just makes a disgusted noise that it too is covered in mud. Stomping (and yes it most assuredly is a stomp despite how she wants to internally protest that she’s too old for such a thing) Alex just heads into the bathroom and grabs her glasses as she throws on the shirt that she took off. It’s long enough that it hides everything so there she _won’t offend him with her nakedness_. By the time she’s returned he’s in a standing position and Alex just moves past him to the suitcase. “Where are they in here?” Her tone isn’t reasonable in the slightest and Alex tells herself she doesn’t _care_. “And for your information, I was about to get in the fucking shower.”

“Top pocket. Left side.” The words are clipped bites, sharp and petty as he adds, “and you’ll need to forgive me that I’m showering first considering I have spent the day being grilled and threatened by your father in a way that somehow makes both _yours and Thomas Warren’s_ efforts _amateurish at best_ before standing in cold water for hours and then falling in mud, losing my glasses; and needing to be led from the woods like an invalid!” 

Handing the glasses to him in a way that probably would have been a throw if she herself doesn’t know how it is to be without a pair, Alex just snaps. “Fine! I wouldn’t want to offend you with my nakedness anyway!”

“Need I remind you, Alex, why I am subjecting myself to all of this farce? So you don’t end up living here permanently?!” His voice is a tundra of hissed anger as he shoves the glasses onto his face. 

Alex’s own hiss is a furnace in response. “Need I remind you whose idea this whole fucking thing was?!”

“Someone who was clearly blinded and making a mistake!”

“Good! Then just go like you always do, Richard. Run away. This time I won’t chase you. You’ll finally be free of me at last, the government will make sure of that! But it’ll be my fault too. And you can just tell your father’s house that in as smug of a voice as you want too. I’m sure it’ll listen better than my recorder does.” For a long moment, Alex just can’t believe she said that, and from the look on Richard’s face, he can’t believe it either. Every part of her wants to take it back. She won’t. _She can’t_ not when she can feel her heartbreaking in her chest. So, instead for the first time, _Alex’s_ the one to double down on their fight. “I’ll ride with my parents. You do what you’ve got to do, Richard.”

Turning away from him is the hardest thing that she’s needed to do in a long time, but Alex does as she goes to the closet to grab her dress bag from it. Hearing the door behind her shut without a word, Alex can feel herself start to cry. At least it’s silent, she muses as she moves to grab the things that she needs to go with it from her suitcase. Before picking up both of her purses, Alex just digs his car keys out and leaves them on top of the suitcase where Richard can’t miss them. Then she heads down to the half-bath to get ready the best that she can. Forcing herself not to look back as she shuts the door, it’s all Alex can do to try and stop crying and readying to lie to everyone about where her fiancee is. 

Because Alex has very little doubt that he’s going to not show up to the party. Just like she’s got even less of a doubt that he’d be at the house or even in Seattle when she got back. Telling herself that it doesn’t matter won’t work and applying her makeup takes so long that her mother comes to tell her to hurry up because they’re late. Hearing the shower upstairs, Alex just smiles and is glad she brought some visine. “Richard’s going to meet us there. I think it’s probably going to take him a while to get the mud out of his ears. Thanks, Dad. I definitely wanted to have an abdominal mudman for a date.” 

It’s Alex making a bad joke, of course, and Danny clearly knows it, but ignores it for her sake. Instead he just kisses the side of her forehead and says softly. “It’s going to be okay, baby.” Not for the first time in her life, Alex wishes that she could believe him about the future. Not for the first time, she also knows that he’s not right. Nothing is ever going to be okay again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. But what's a romcom without a third act break up?


	12. Let's finish what we started

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cup and a phone charger remind Richard of what he could lose. 
> 
> Or: Richard Strand finally gets his head out of his ass and goes to get his girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I have 110% had a terrible terrible day, and because I have had such a terrible day, I am spreading some goodness to you guys. So in short: I'm going to upload all of the remaining chapters of this story right now! Thanks for all the comments and kudos, seriously. <3

As soon as the bathroom door was closed Richard Strand just sinks onto the toilet and buries his face in his hands. It’s not even hours counting in the double digits since he’d told Danny that he was going to make it up to Alex for his past behavior and here they were having one of the most vicious fights that they’d ever had. At the very least, it feels the most vicious because unlike their prior clashes, they can’t even pretend that the worst of their insults are that in the professional realm. At the very least, he can’t. No, this was just them being them and Alex being Alex and he had lashed out perhaps harder than he ever had. 

How can he claim to love her and still do that over something that was, in retrospect, as small as it was today? For a long moment, he doesn’t have an answer and he just rises to his feet. From the window in the bathroom, he can see Alice’s car doors open. The passengers, then the… oh. Oh that was the backseat. Alex really had left. Watching as the car leaves the driveway, Richard just feels vaguely numb and the cold from the drying mud causes the emotional sensation to have a physical equivalent and for a long moment he doesn’t know what to do other than to start to mechanically remove the clothing that he’s wearing. 

To say that he’s cold all over would be untrue. The one thing on his body that still feels warm are his hands, and it doesn’t require a PhD to know why. His hands were on Alex’s naked hips before he’d sent it all to hell, and now the warmth of her mocks Richard for that. Stepping into a shower that has long since turned cold doesn’t negate the heat in his hands—instead it only serves to make the contrast all the more obvious as he starts to scour the mud from his skin with the bar soap and washcloth that the Reagans provided. Oh, that’s why she was naked. There’s nothing that smells of Alex in the products in the bathroom and it’s all to easy for Richard to visualize the reason that Alex had gone naked out into the main space of the bedroom. He supposed that he should be glad that he smells of sterile and institutional dial soap rather than his own or what he uses but it only serves to drive the point home about how much he really did fuck up with this. 

He fucked up. _He fucked up_ and now he doesn’t know what to do. Unlike every other time he’s been a bastard to her, Richard knows that he can’t fix this with coffee and a black tape. He can’t fix it by showing up at the party. Debating whether or not he should even be here when Alex and her parents return, Richard moves into the bedroom for warmer clothing and the phone that he had put into a waterproof bag before the disaster of a fishing trip that morning. A strategic retreat, he decides at last, going through his suitcase for boxers and a shirt. He’ll simply call the hotel and reserved a room for the night and he and Alex can speak in the morning when her temper has cooled and she’s willing to listen to his apologies for his behavior tonight and for missing the party. 

Unfortunately for Richard, when he pulls out his phone to make the call, he discovers that it’s dead, hopefully as a result of searching in vain for a cellphone signal in the woods and not from the misadventures with the puddle. Fortunately for Richard (and he will continue to be thankful for it for the rest of his life) Alex had left her charger plugged in by the bed and it was still there. Moving over to the left side, and sitting on it, the scent of Alex’s lotion wafts around him, making him sigh loudly as he reaches over to plug his phone in. Catching sight of the Starbucks carrier tray with the two cups in it as well as the familiar brown and green bag balanced between, Richard just groans. For Alex to bring him a drink when she gets is something that has been happening for literally years now, and it causes an ache deep in his chest. Somewhat reflexively, he just reaches out for the cup closest to him, picking up. Luke warm (or cold) tea is better than he deserves right now, and it’s been a very long time since the ham and butter sandwiches and bad coffee that Danny had provided for lunch. 

But when he sees what’s written on the cup, Richard’s heart just stills in his chest. Scrawled in a very feminine hand (and definitely not Alex’s) there’s a message ‘_To the future Mrs. Strand! <3_ and then when he turns the cup, it continues ‘_Congrats, Alex!_ The words stare back at him for a long moment. Alex, he knows even though they hadn’t discussed it, wouldn’t take his name when (if. And a very broad if at this point.) the two of them married. He wouldn’t want her to because Alex is her own person, and Richard would never want her to give up any pieces of herself to be his wife. But still, he can see Alex being given the coffee and smiling broadly with hope on her face. He can see the joy in her eyes that so often comes when he enters a room, and he can hear her laughing when he makes a joke. But more than that, he refuses to allow the last time he saw Alex’s face to be the one that was so tight in hurt an anger as it was when she left the bedroom. 

So, for the first time since Richard had actually started taking care of himself again, he dresses quickly, pulling on his suit and tie without even bothering to shave (despite her hatred of his beard, Richard knows that Alex does like him with some stubble) or spend an inordinate amount of time fixing his hair. He does add some cologne though, just because he is vain enough to not want Alex’s (and his own) future memories of tonight to be associated with the stench of dial soap. Forgetting to add socks before putting his feet into his shoes, Richard just grabs his phone and car keys and wallet and coat, knowing that there’s a charger in his car that he can use to get him to the venue. 

The Richard Strand who peels out of the Reagan’s parking lot isn’t someone who Alex Reagan would recognize--by driving ability at least. He drives faster than he has in years, wanting to get to the venue before she starts to believe that he isn’t going to show. Alex Reagan is a believer, and she believes in him and he’s not going to let her down with this. Not now. Richard’s not an idiot, and he’s not naive: he’s going to let her down in the future--he’s probably going to let her down many times just like she’s going to let him down. But that is not tonight. In many ways, this feels like a last chance to get it right, and there’s something in Richard’s head that sounds rather like ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ and alternately, ‘shit or get off the pot, stupid.’ So he drives at a speed more suitable for the highway than the winding village backroads, and thankfully he encounters no police officers or other drivers before he turns into the crowded parking lot of the hall that Alex had rented for the party. 

The parking lot is so overly full that he needs to find parking on a side street, and he curses his lack of foresight in grabbing his coat as Richard hustles towards the brightly lit venue. When he comes inside, it’s beautifully decorated, in whites and golds with flowers and candles gleaming at every table. In many ways, it feels like the promise of the wedding that the two of them could have, and he looks through the crowd for Alex. Despite her anger, despite how upset she was, Richard knows that this isn’t something that she would miss. Instead, like so many other things, Alex would follow through and grin and bear it. Still, he can’t help but to be relieved when he spots her standing at the bar ordering a drink as he begins to work his way purposefully through the crowd to reach her side. 

What he does not expect is to hear the voice of Alice Reagan through a dip in the music say “because you’re pregnant!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun Dun Dun.


	13. Dig them up, so nothing's left untouched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time, Alex and Richard are one hundred percent honest about their feelings. 
> 
> Or: Richard Strand finally gets his Darcy moment.

The venue looks great, and even her mother is pleased and happy as they come into the glowing hall. Aunt Rita had made sure that the candles on all of the tables were lit, and she’d also made all of the calls that Alex couldn’t make to be certain that people had actually arrived fifteen minutes before her parents were due to so that they could make the grand entrance that they’d never gotten to do when the two of them had eloped. Their elopement had been the reason that Alex had gone so all in on this party. At the time, it had seemed like a great idea, but right now it feels like something is squeezing on her chest as Alex just forces the smile on her face and into her eyes. Once the applause for her parents had subsided, and they were firmly seated at their sweetheart table in the middle of the room, Alex just makes a beeline for the bar. There is no fucking way in hell that she’s going to be dealing with all of this sober. 

The part of her that has reawoken her teenage angst wants to just wants to order two shots of tequila and go from there. The part of her that has been drinking good bourbon for the last three months wants to order Four Roses. The part of her heart that’s still in the process of shattering refuses to even accept that idea. So, in the end, Alex just orders a cosmo because the person in front of her does, and it’s sort of the antithesis to what she’d normally have and at the same time has enough of an alcohol content to get her drink in a relatively quick fashion. As soon as the bartender places it in front of her (and Alex is really glad that she’d forked over the money for an open bar so that she doesn’t need to dig out her wallet) she just reaches for it and drains the glass. “Another please.” 

The boy tending bar is someone who looks familiar, and Alex eventually realizes that he was a few years behind her in school, and he just nods before he makes her another one. Somewhat ill-advisedly, Alex knows that he’s going to awkwardly flirt with her from the way that he’s staring at the relatively low (for her anyway) lace on her neckline. Sighing softly, Alex just waits for it to drop, but in the end she reaches up and crosses her arms and the kid seems to get the hint. Well, it probably was a good thing that she didn’t toss the ring at Richard’s head like she’d thought about in the car. That was the worst part about being angry with someone like Richard: thinking about all of the things that Alex wishes that she had done instead of what she actually did do. It doesn’t do anything but drive her crazy, but unfortunately, there’s nothing that Alex can do about it save but wonder if he was going to show up. 

Jolted by her thoughts by the kid behind the bar gently clearing his throat, Alex just mentally shakes herself and gives him a thin smile as she stares at the bright pink of the drink in front of her. This time, Alex just takes it in hand and sips it before two shocking things happen that make her drop the damned glass. Thing one: Richard Strand and his being nearly taller than everything else are easily spotted coming through the crowd towards her. He hasn’t shaved, and his hair is still damp from his shower, and she thinks that he may have missed some mud in his ear, but he’s definitely here. The second thing, however is what really, really, _really_ does it. Before Richard can get there, and as the song that the DJ is playing dips out, her mother just stands in front of Alex, her voice carrying easily through the low chatter of the party: “Alexandra what are you doing?! You can’t drink in your condition!” 

“Condition?” Alex just stares blankly at her mother for a moment, and judging from the gasps in the crowd, running several seconds in her thought processes behind everyone else. Probably because only three people in the room are aware of the fact that Alex and Richard haven’t actually had sex. 

“Because you’re pregnant!” Oh. Oh. There’s something sharp and harsh in her chest as Alex realizes that her mother thinks that she and Richard would somehow only get married because she was pregnant. Alex doesn’t even say anything as she just stalks out past her mother and through the crowd to the nearest door, slamming it open and storming out into the cold autumn air. 

“Oh my god.” Alex just whispers to the night. “_Oh my god._” The words come again, and Alex just covers her mouth with her hand, because even if she can’t actually hear what’s happening back inside the hall, she can feel it buzzing around her like wasps. God, she’s going to be deported and she’s not going to be able to ever show her face back here again. She’s going to need to find a job with the specter of the show unsolved on her, and she’s going need to like work on radio news in Nova Soca at this point! Leaning against a car sans her coat, Alex just buries her face in her hands for a moment wanting the world to swallow her up. 

Alex would honestly like an asteroid to crash into her too when she hears an all too familiar voice call out, “Alex wait!” The lights from the hall dim as Richard’s shadow falls over here and for a moment she just wants to throw herself into his arms. 

The moment passes quickly when she can see him clearly and her fury bubbles up. “Of course you were here to see that!” She yells at him. Truly yells at him for once in her life. “Of course you were. The most humiliating moment in my entire fucking life and you had a front row seat. The man who only wanted to marry me out of pity and obligation got to see my mother assume that the only reason that I was ever going to get married was because I was stupid and irresponsible and got knocked up and trapped you. Of course you got to see it. You’ll probably replay it over and over.”

“Alex what are you talking about?!” Richard sounds genuinely confused and that makes Alex all the more angry for it. 

“I heard you! Back at your father’s house! I heard you talking to Markus about how this was all your fault and how you were only doing this to get me out of a jam that’s my fault in the first place! Well, good news, Dr. Strand! I release you from whatever imagined obligations that you have to me. I don’t need your pity or your proposal. I got along fine for thirty years without you and I’ll get on fine while you’re gone!” Alex is still shouting, even though Richard is within touching distance now and she wants to shove him away from her but she doesn’t. 

“Alex,” Richard tries again, using the voice that he does when he’s trying to calm her, or when he asks her if she’s okay and it’s _infuriating_. 

“No! Don’t try and handle me, Richard. What the hell are you even doing here?! I told you to go home back at the house. Why are you here now?!”

“Alex,” he starts again, raising his voice a bit. “Just stop! Just listen!”

“No! I don’t want to listen to you anymore. For three years I’ve been listening! Even when you think I don’t, even when I was away at the cabin I listened. I heard your fucking voice in my head trying to tell me all of my fears weren’t real. Bet you didn’t know that did you?! Bet you didn’t know how many fucking times I listened to your voice when I was trying to fall asleep to keep the nightmares away! I bet you don’t know—“

“Alex just stop! I’m trying to tell you that I love you and you’re being deliberately obtuse!”

“Don’t tell me to fucking stop! For three years I’ve been stopping saying what I really want to you and now I…” But what she wanted to say for three years just doesn’t come out as what Richard Strand has just said to her starts to sink in. Unable to keep the confusion out of her voice, Alex just asks: “did you just say you love me?”

“Alex Reagan,” Richard starts, and then he pauses before he speaks again a stumbling sort of urgency in his words. “I have loved you for far longer than I ever should have. I found you charming when you showed up in my office, and when you walked away from me to look at my collection, I easily pictured myself kissing you. When you hung up on me after the Torres case, the first time, I tried to tell myself that I was glad. You wondered why I brought you the tape afterwards. I wasn’t lying, Alex, I did want to use you as a platform for spreading skepticism but I also wanted to see you again.”

Alex wants to speak, but when Richard holds out his hand, she can’t find it in her to interrupt. Honestly, all of this seems like some sort of weird dream. 

“When I tried to quit just before your pet murderer became a part of this, it was because I found that my attraction—my _like_ of you was deepening. I knew that my feelings weren’t something that I could ever act upon so I tried to be a bastard to you so you would leave me alone for a multitude of reasons. But no matter what you were there, Alex. You were always there. No matter how hard we pushed and shoved at one another. I don’t want to lose you. I have never wanted to lose you. 

“When you discovered Coralee was alive, I ran. I was scared and I ran. I thought that my wife was alive and needed me and I had fallen in love with a maddening reporter who was younger than my daughter and who had no sense of boundaries or properietity. I told myself that in your eyes, I was nothing more than a story. I tried to make myself hate you, Alex but I couldn’t anymore than I could stop loving you. I attempted to be the bastard to you that I am to everyone else and thought that would make you leave me alone. 

“But you refused to leave me alone. When you showed up in Chicago, looking beautiful and like sunlight after a Seattle rain storm, my heart constricted. I thought that if I could simply use you to find my wife then my feelings would simply vanish. We would find Coralee and my heart would stop beating maddeningly quickly when you were around. It was supposed to be easy. It was anything but. When I had arrived to your offices, I was relieved that you weren’t there, but then you were and it took everything in me not to kiss you, Alex. When you dragged me to eat food, when you bullied me to sleep, when you tried to break me from the madness that had gripped me my heart kept telling me that you were doing it because you loved me.”

“I was.” The words are a whisper, and Alex just watches him slowly, and there are tears in her eyes as Richard says things that she’d needed to talk herself out of believing that she had always tried to think that she was being subtle about. But he saw. He saw and he knew and he was still fucking talking. 

“But you were falling apart, Alex. Before my eyes I could see the things that you tried to hide. The belief was written in your face and your voice, in the way that first there were shadows under your eyes and then in the makeup that you’d learned to apply. I told myself that what was happening was what always happened when I allowed myself to become involved with someone: that my love for you was poison and that it was going to destroy you just like it did everything else. So I never said anything. Instead I just wrapped myself in my anger and told myself that you would eventually just tire of me and my bullshit and you would leave like everyone else. I tried to make you leave but nothing was ever enough.

“And then there was Coralee. When we met in the bedroom, yes she told me what I had told you that night. That she had been working for an organization that she had been tasked with watching me and marrying me and ingraining herself into my life. But she also accused me of loving you. Of knowing how it looks when I do love someone. And she told me that Warren knew too. Warren was looking for any weakness in me and you are a weakness, Alex. That night as I sat there with my heart breaking, when I told the both of us that I love my wife very much, I was trying to convince myself as much as I was attempting to convince you. It was a folly because as we sat there and drank that bourbon all I wanted to kiss you like I’d wanted to for two years. 

“And then I ran again. I am not a good man, Alex. I told myself that I was running to protect you—that I needed to tell Charlie so that she could arm herself against what was coming. I told myself over and over again that breaking your heart was the right thing. So I spent time with Charlie and told her everything. But I didn’t realize then that everything meant that I loved you. You asked me yesterday how Charlie felt about our engagement and I told you that she wasn’t surprised. She _wasn’t_ because apparently there wasn’t a day out of those ninety that I didn’t talk about you. That I wasn’t thinking about you. That I didn’t miss you. I tried so hard not to love you, Alex but I couldn’t do it any more than I could stop myself from breathing. 

“And I lied to you before,” The words are softer now as Richard just wraps his hands around hers. “I told you that the ring was just something that I happened to have. It wasn’t. When I was with Charlie in Rome we went shopping in the antique shops on _Via Giulia_. There was this one particular shop that Charlie liked and she dragged me into it. It was there I saw the ring and I couldn’t help but to imagine it on your finger. I didn’t buy it that day. Or the second time I went back to look at it. I was on my way to the airport and I realized that I couldn’t leave without the ring that was meant to be yours. So, I went back into the city to get it and missed my flight.”

“Richard…” Alex starts quickly, and her fingers reach up to brush his cheek because there’s so much that she wants to say. But he cuts her off again. 

“Please let me finish, Alex. I’m nearly done.” He pauses for a moment before he adds, “when I came back from Rome I had the ring in my pocket. It lived there for long that I was certain you would notice it wearing a line in my suits. And I promised myself that I would tell you when this was all over. Really over. When we stopped whatever Warren was doing I would tell you my feelings. I would tell you I loved you. Each time I brought up Coralee in my anger, each time I used her against you I was using her against myself as well. I was trying to buy space and time with your pain and I’m more sorry than I can say for that, Alex. But I love you. I love you and I want to marry you. Not out of pity or obligation or anything like that but simply because I love you and can’t imagine my life without you in it. I want you to be my wife, Alex Reagan. Will you marry me for real?”

“Richard Strand,” Alex just laughs softly, the edges of the sound thickened with tears. “You complete idiot. I love you too. Of course I’m going to marry you for real.” Moving up onto her toes, Alex leans forward and presses her lips lightly. There’s a question in it, almost as if she’s not sure whether or not he’s going to bolt away from her as he has so many times in the past. Her kiss is met in the form of his demanding answering once and Richard just crushes her against his chest, holding onto her so tightly that Alex is well aware of the fact that that this is an embrace she’s going to feel the memory of in her bones for the rest of her life. She can’t not, and for a moment Alex just laughs into the kiss—the sound is one of joy and of being right. 

Alex Reagan has gotten a bit used to being right after the fact. When all of the men in her life tell her that she’s wrong, Alex argues with them and low and behold that gut feeling that she has turns out to be correct far more than it’s not. It’s math and it’s evidence and her heart has expected that Richard’s feelings for her were there even when she tried to talk herself out of them. And she did. She had. Alex had talked herself out of his having feelings for her more times than she could count. And far earlier than she’d ever admit to anyone but him. 

Although now, maybe she’d need to admit it to immigration officials. But that was a problem for later. For now, Alex just thinks of things from earlier in their relationship. Of how much they flirted, the way he had leaned over her shoulder to show her things in the cabin pictures. The way that he’d touched her hair demonstrating the things for the demon board. People had caught them easily judging from her twitter feed but in the end, she’d laughed them off. 

She wouldn’t be doing that anymore. 

But—with them there’s always a but—Alex needs to be sure. So she pulls away slowly and presses her hand to his cheek, keeping there as the stubble tickles it. She does like the stubble. “Okay.” Alex just breathes the word as she tries to stir up the courage for her question. “I have to ask this. Just once. Are you really sure, Richard? I mean. In me. I’m not going to change. Who I am isn’t going to change. I’m still going to do stupid things and be reckless, and this mess” Alex just gestured back towards the party. “Is still always gonna be a part of that.”

From the way Richard stills, it’s almost as if she’s given him a slap. “I’m sorry. I should have thought—it was just a. Uh. A passing fancy. We don’t need to. You know if you don’t want to.” And as she so often does, Alex hears what’s below that. _You don’t want me and that’s fine but it’s not fine. _

“Richard.” Alex just sighs his name and grabs his hands before he can draw away from her physically like he’s trying to draw away from her emotionally. “That’s not what I meant. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want you. That I don’t love you. I just don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and realize that this is a terrible idea. I don’t want to spend three months wondering if you’re going to come back. I know why you left. I get it I do. You needed to tell Charlie. You needed space. But I don’t ever want you to regret the choice you’re making for me.”

“Alex.” Richard just begins and she shakes her head. 

“I let you talk and you’re gonna let me, okay? We’re both going to be entirely honest for once and then we go forward we’re going to be honest with one another for the rest of our lives if that’s what you still want.” Alex’s voice goes a little softer when she adds, “that’s what I still want. I love you. I love you with every piece of me and I have for god way longer than I should have. 

“I know you think I always came back—that I always took what you dished out for a story. And I’m not going to lie, I _am_ here for the story. But it’s not the only reason I am and it hasn’t been for a long time. I have been in love with you for three years, Richard Strand. That’s why everything was so damned hard between us sometimes. I thought that you knew how I felt and that you were breaking my heart on purpose. I thought you were doing it to defend yourself. 

“And then there was everything with finding Coralee. You know I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t anywhere near at my best. But I showed up in Chicago not for the story but because I was worried about you. Because I missed you, Richard. I kept missing you. And then you only sort of came back and I was angry and hurting and not sleeping and everything that you did was you trying to push me out. You’d said that we had a connection and then you vanished again. 

“I know you never asked what happened when I recorded you and Amalia and I never explained. But there was something wrong with Amalia that I couldn’t put my finger on and then you wanted to have a private meeting with her. So it was like two of the most important people in my life were just… shutting me out. Out of their lives, out of the story, out of everything. And I wasn’t in my right mind and I was jealous. I was so damned jealous because…”

“You were jealous?! That’s why you did it?!” He sounds like he can’t believe it. 

“You are not the only one with jealousy issues, Richard. I am an only child after all. And you know. I’m _me_. I haven’t exactly been subtle with them. I mean I was ready to scream when you told me your friend that you were working on things with was a woman. And then later when you said that you’d been working with Coralee… it didn’t help.” 

Alex just sighs then, and he leans forward and touches the line of her lower lip gently. “I’m sorry. I told you, Alex. I’m not a good man. I was trying to make you jealous. Trying to make you run. I can never judge you for that, Alex. And I don’t judge you for everything else that you did then. I know that we were both pushing each other so we didn’t..”

“Let anything happen. Between us. I know. And I knew even when we took a step forward and two steps back after you returned from Italy. I knew it even…”

“Even when I used Coralee against you.” He finishes her thought easily. “I used her to try and push you away, and then again when I was so angry that you’d disregarded your safety to go alone to Turkey. I’m not a good man, Alex. And I wasn’t at my best. I missed you. And I am a jealous man as well.”

Alex just snorts. “Please for the love of god tell me you are jealous of Simon!” When he’s silent, Alex just stares at him in confusion. “Simon, really? But he’s like twelve and _Simon_ for crying aloud. It’s like being jealous of _Nic._” When Richard just shifts uncomfortably Alex just lets out a breath of disbelief. “_Seriously?!_”

“It’s not them. At least not directly. I was jealous of how easily you trusted your pet murderer. It’s why when you returned I felt the need to ask for your trust. And with Nicodemus it was more the casual intimacy, that you never guarded yourself in the same way you do with me. I told you. _I am not a good man, Alex_.”

Huffing quickly, Alex just pokes him gingerly in the chest. “Would you stop fucking saying that?! You’re a way better man than you’d ever give yourself credit for, Richard Strand. A good man wouldn’t have fought his feelings for me anywhere near as long as you did. A good man wouldn’t have cared about me or the show or my reputation enough to agree to marry me without even knowing if it would end up being something worth it.”

“You’re wrong, Alex. Even if nothing happened between us—even if nothing still happens between us. It would have always been worth it to keep you in my life. Because I love you, Alexandra Calliope Reagan. I love you with every broken part of me.” 

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing I love you. Even the broken parts of you. And I will say it’s pretty dumb to assume that nothing is going to happen between us when I definitely thought about having sex with you on your desk when we had just met, Dr. Strand.” The laugh is there in her voice as she wraps her arms round his neck. 

“Oh, is that so, Ms. Reagan? Well, I have to say that desk is quite far away. I hope the desk in my office here will suffice.” He kisses her then, and it’s long and slow before she laughs. 

“Oh. Don’t think I hadn’t thought about that one too!”

“Well, I suppose that you’re just going to need to enlighten me, Alex, on all of the places you imagined me making love to you, considering we have the rest of our lives to make every one of your fantasies come true.”

He’s kissing her again (rather soundly, Alex might add, and she’s kissing him just as soundly in return) when the door opens and brightness surrounds them right in the middle of their rather heavy make out session. “Alex honey, are you gonna come back inside?” 

Laughing, Alex just calls out, “we’ll be there in a minute, Aunt Rita.”

When the door shuts, Richard just mildly murmurs against her neck, “will we?”

“Yes, my love we will. Because I’ve got a plan.” 

Somehow, Richard doesn’t groan when she says that even though she can tell that he dearly wants too. Maybe they’ve both learned something about things tonight after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love these two idiots, and I hope that their feelings for one another conversation is every bit as good as you hoped it would be.


	14. When all of your flaws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Richard Strand doesn’t fear ghosts, specters, demons, creepy children, Alex Reagan’s pet murderer or Nicodemus Silver’s disapproving looks. He doesn’t fear Warren or Alice’s wrath or even Danny’s bold face threats. But if there is one thing that Strand does fear (and it’s a well learned fear after all) is when Alexandra Reagan utters the most terrifying of words: ‘I’ve got a plan’. This moment is not an exception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is just 100% shameless fluff

Dr. Richard Strand doesn’t fear ghosts, specters, demons, creepy children, Alex Reagan’s pet murderer or Nicodemus Silver’s disapproving looks. He doesn’t fear Warren or Alice’s wrath or even Danny’s bold face threats. But if there is one thing that Strand does fear (and it’s a well learned fear after all) is when Alexandra Reagan utters the most terrifying of words: ‘I’ve got a plan’. This moment is not an exception as Alex fixes her makeup in the harsh beam from the phone app on his flashlight, and then as she kisses him again before wrapping her hand around his as they head back into the party. 

Thankfully while they were outside, the waitstaff had brought around the salad course. Instead of leading them to their seat, as Richard expects her to do, Alex makes her way through crowd and to the whatever the hell they call the DJ’s set up is nowadays. She grabs a flute of champagne from a waiter’s tray and tilts her head to indicate he should take one too. Alex doesn’t need to borrow a knife for silence, because the din has quieted as soon as they had realized that Alex was back, but she just tapped her ring against the side of the glassware anyway before she took the microphone from the dj with a grin. 

Given that Alex Reagan is probably always her most at home in front of a microphone he shouldn’t be surprised by how easy her smile and demeanor is at the moment, but he can’t help but be envious by the way that she easily takes command of a room so filled with people who know all of her secrets and whom she’s just been humiliated in front of. But she does, nor should Richard be surprised at how she opens her speech given Alex but he is. 

“Well, now that I suppose you’ve all done your math in order to try and predict my wedding date…” there’s still pink in her cheeks at saying that, but Alex keeps going and Richard can feel pride and love for her swelling in his chest. This is just one more thing that he himself couldn’t do, but that Alex excels at. “And I’m sure you’ve started the betting pools already but I should tell you that no, I’m not pregnant. No, I’m not planning on _ever_ getting pregnant and I’m just really glad that my parents like dogs because at some point we’ll be getting a few of those but not yet. Richard and I are getting married because we want too. And that’s all there is too it. I love him and he loves me and we’ve just been through too much to be apart. That’s it.”

There’s a burst of laughter at that and then even more comes when she adds: “So by definition I’ve won all of your pools, so if you want to fork over that money, I’ll be around all night.” The anxiety in the room has diminished even before Alex shifts away from herself and their upcoming wedding. “But we’re not here to talk about me or my getting married, we’re here to celebrate the love of my parents and the fact that they’ve been married fifty years now!”

Despite what Richard May have implied to Alex on more than one occasion, he does know that she’s good at her job. He’d never tell her that, of course but he is well aware that she is outstanding reporter. He’s seen the awards that wreathed the walls of her office before she’d become so mired in his story and even if people think she’s certifiable mu now, he knows that she’s done incredible work in digging up things that he’d far prefer would have stayed buried. But the thing that he’d forgotten most was how Alex is a consummate _storyteller_ and by the time she’s done with her speech, there’s hardly a dry eye in the house. 

Not counting his own, of course. There’s a reason that Ruby’s favorite adjective for him is _salty_. 

Alex’s tears were certainly wet, and when she steps back out of the spotlight and away from the applause, Richard does want he’s wanted to do for a very long time: despite the fact that they’re in public, he draws her into his arm and kisses her soundly, and holds onto her for a long moment. Alex Reagan is particularly good at hugs, and they’ve been denying themselves that for far too long. “That was beautiful, Alex.” He whispers softly into her ear below he kisses the space below it. 

“It was okay,” she replies quickly with a laugh. “I forgot my notes back at the house.”

“Well, no one could tell. Not even me. Should we sit down?” 

“In a minute. I’ve got something I need to do first.” Alex lets go of his neck, but Richard is relieved when her fingers just wrap around his and she leads them to her parents table. Danny rises first and Alex does let go of him to hug her father, and then her mother in turn. “I just wanted to let you know that Richard and I aren’t going to be coming back to the house tonight. And I’m not going to meet you at church tomorrow morning. We’ll be there for the family dinner at two though.”

“Alex…” Alice starts to protest. “Just because you’re angry….”

“I’m not. Well, I mean. Not anymore. But I’m also just not going to do things because you think I should either. I’m an adult, Mom. I’m an adult and I don’t believe in your church. I don’t know if I believe in God even, so I’m not going to keep making myself get up early and feel terrible like I’m lying to you about something that’s a big part of me. And my search for the truth _is a big part of me._ So, I’m just not going to pretend to be something that I’m not.” A beat, and her mother doesn’t say anything, or do anything other than blink. “And we’re not going to get married in a church. Not because Richard’s an atheist or anything like that, but because it’s not what I want to do. And I don’t want to get married up here so tied to the person that I _was._ I want to get married in Seattle surrounded by the people who love me for who I _am._ And I hope that you can respect that. I love you, and I know you love me, but I hope you’ll understand that I need to be who I am.” 

“Alexandra, I love who you are. Not who I want you to be, or who I think you should be! You’re my little girl, and I’m going to love you no matter what! If you don’t want to get married in a church, or here, it’s okay! So long as we’re there to see you get married to the man that you love.” 

“You will! I promise. We just need to decide what that looks like first, okay?” Alex leans over and kisses her mother’s cheek before her father just comes to the rescue once again. 

“Now Alice, we’ll talk to them tomorrow. They’re about to start taking food away, and given the two of them I bet they haven’t been doing a lot of eating today. Let the kids go eat.” 

There is part of Richard that smarts at being dismissed as ‘the kids’ but he doesn’t comment on it as Alice returns to her seat and Alex holds her hand out to him. When their fingers wrap around one another, he smiles because he can’t help it as she leads them to their seats next to her aunt and grandmother. Alex slips into the seat next to her grandmother, with a kiss to her cheek and starts by talking softly to her before Richard prods her knee with his own in order to remind her to eat. Picking up his own knife and fork, he just smiles to Rita, whom he’d met the night before and had liked despite the chaos around them. 

When she hands him the butter without his asking, Rita just talks in low tones. “I’m sure my brother in law put the fear of him into you, Richard. And I know that Alice turned the screws on poor Alex earlier.” That was another piece too, of why Alex was so on edge and it causes a relief he can’t name in his chest. So their fight wasn’t them. At least it wasn’t them entirely anyway. Of course, he can’t help but wonder what the screws were on Alex but judging from the conversation that she’d had with her mother, he has more than a bit of an inkling. 

“But my niece really does love you. And I think you really do love her, despite everything that has gone on on the show. When Alex told me what you had done the other night,” there’s a pointed look to the flashing of Alex’s hands as she talks animatedly to her grandmother and Richard knows that someone else knows of their plans. Secrets are kept better when less people know about them and he doesn’t like that theirs is out there. 

But Rita reads him well. Not as well as Alex does of course because she’s _Alex_ but her next response handles some of the concern that he has. “Don’t worry, I’m not my niece and I’m good at secrets. Honestly, I was just glad to see you got your head out of your ass and admitted what so many other people see: how much you love her. Judging from what I walked in on outside, you two finally confessed to what you’re feeling. And you have no idea how glad I am for it. You’re good for her, Richard and I think she’s good for you too.”

Watching Alex as she eats a bit of her roll and then laughs softly at something her grandmother says coloring lightly. If he leaned forward he knows he’d be able to hear it, but the conversation that he’s having with her aunt is more important than what made her laugh. “She is.” The words come softly. “Yes, Alex was a bomb that went off in my perfectly ordered and logical world but I wouldn’t change it for anything. I love her. And whatever comes next, we’re going to handle it together. When we’re on the same page we may each other better. I think perhaps now we’ll be on the same page forever.”

“Good.” Rita laughs softly and takes a sip of her wine. “Because if Danny needs help with a body. I’m the one he’s going to call.”

“Jesus I talk to gran for two seconds and you guys are already talking about body hiding!” There’s a laugh in her voice as Alex leans forward and wraps her hand around Richard’s quickly. “You okay, baby?” 

The word just makes him blink because he can’t help it. “I’m fine. We’re just talking about….”

“My dad gave you the shovel talk didn’t he?” Richard is very pleased he knows what it is and makes a mental note to give Ruby a raise. 

“Indeed he did. But I would expect nothing less from your family.” Next to him Rita just snorts in laugher and Alex laughs more softly before she leans over to whisper into his ear. 

“I booked the hotel. For whenever you’re ready to leave.” She knows he hates events like this. Alex knows that her preferred to have an out so she’d made him one. He loves her so much and because he loves her so much, Richard just kisses her hand before he says softly. 

“We have to stay for a little while. You put all this work in. Besides.” The Dj has just started to play something that sounds soft and slow enough to dance too. “I’d like to have this dance if I may.”

“Are you sure, Richard? There’s no one else on the floor.”

“Do I need to triple dog dare you, Ms. Reagan?” The words are dry, but the grin on his face is warm. 

“I was just being considerate, Dr. Strand. I just didn’t think you were fond of dancing.” The smirk is so evident on her face, he just wants to kiss it off. 

“I do believe I’ll chance once dance. For science.” Then rising to his feet, Richard offers Alex a hand which she takes so quickly it might have been a reflex. Drawing her up close to him, Richard just wraps his arms around her waist as she snakes her arms around his neck. 

There’s still a long moment before Alex just laughs, and the laugh is like fingers moving over his spine, a hand on his thigh. “So dancing for science huh?”

“Seemed a good excuse to actually have you in my arms.” He mused the words softly before leaning forward and bending down Richard dots a kiss to Alex’s bare shoulder, drawing in the scent of her there. “Wouldn’t you agree, snookems?”

Alex just draws away from him with a laugh but not too far, just so she can watch his face. “Snookems? _Really_?”

“Well, Ms. Reagan.” He muses softly. “It’s not as if I’ve had much use for pet names in the last twenty years. And considering I’ve heard your mother, father, grandmother and aunt addressing you as ‘baby’ it’s not exactly something I feel comfortable doing. So I suppose we’re going to need to come up with some acceptable list of them.”

Alex just laughs again. “Well, I suppose if that’s what you want to talk about while we’re dancing…” Richard kisses her then and she kisses him back before she adds, “So not baby. And definitely not snookems.” The word comes with a face that makes him laugh and the exaggerated shudder she puts with it only makes him laugh harder. “Darling I liked. From when you panicked.”

“It was hardly panicking, Alex.”

“No, love. It was totally panicking. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.” 

“While I disagree with your assessment of the situation, _darling_. I think I like that. ‘Love’.” Leaning forward, Richard just whispers into her ear. “But you know what I’m going to enjoy saying more? Calling you mine. My Alex. My wife. My love. I think those will work nicely don’t you, my Alex?”

“Yes, _my Richard_ I think they’d do really well actually.” 

Something twists inside Richard and he just groans softly, before he adds: “say it again?”

“Of course, my Richard. As many times as you’d like for the rest of our lives.”

He kisses her then, long and slow before Richard remembers that they’re in public and if he’s grateful for one thing it’s that no one would ever be able to deny the way that he’s entirely besotted with this tiny woman in his arms. “I have been very remiss in something, darling.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” Alex sounds amused as she rests her chin lightly against his chest. 

“I haven’t told you how truly amazing you look tonight. Stunning even. The dress is breathtaking.” And then he whispers again, because if he can’t say it now then when can he say it. “I can’t wait to see what it looks like looks like on the floor of the hotel room.”

“Dr. Strand I believe you were the one who mentioned staying at the party when I wanted to leave.” Alex’s voice is low and flirty and Richard can’t help thinking that she’s not saying _no_. 

“I am not a patient man, Ms. Reagan. Something I believe you are already aware of. Besides, I have been wondering for three years if your intensity would carry over into more intimate matters. I believe that’s quite long enough, don’t you?”

“I believe that we’re going to be very late for dinner tomorrow, Richard.”

They’ve stopped dancing by now, but her hands are still snakes around his neck and his own are resting where the back of her dress meets her skin. “They’ll be other dinners, Alex. I’m sure we’ll be forgiven. We should say our goodbyes, yes?”

Despite the sense of urgency that he can see in Alex—the impatience that colors each interaction as he stands at the bar sipping his bourbon, it still takes her damned close to a half an hour to say goodbye to everyone, and he’s finished his drink long before he joins her at her side to say their farewells to her parents, grandmother and aunt. The only one who seems to want to hurry them on his Rita, and Richard has already decided that of all of the people that he’d met this weekend, she is his favorite. 

And Alex’s somewhat prophetic statement turned out to be true. The two of them were over an hour late for dinner. When they finally showed up, Richard was in his somewhat rumbled suit from the night before and Alex had thrown an old PNWS hoodie that had been living in his car for who knows how long over the top of her dress. Honestly, Richard thinks that covering it is a crime but as Alex had said “you always wear a suit, love and this is well beyond my normal wheelhouse.” Thankfully Rita did some intervening at the door and gave Alex time to run up to the bedroom and change. 

Richard can’t help but notice that it only takes her three minutes to return looking like she’d always been dressed normally. It’s a talent he’s certainly going to take notice of for later. If she can get dressed that quickly and entire new world of possibilities has opened up before him. 

Her office for example. Elsewhere at the studio. Richard Strand’s formidable mind is offering them a whole slew of places that would have prior been off limits. 

When they’re both finally seated in the only spaces that had been left available (between her father and her aunt and Alex wisely took the seat next to Danny) the questioning began. Alex, as she so often did took the lead (‘yes they’re really not going to have kids. No, she's not going to change her mind’ and ‘the wedding will be in Seattle and yes of course you’re invited!’) 

Then from Alex’s uncle John there’s another question and this time Richard answers is. “Alex is going to be moving into my house when we get back. She practically lives there already and I can’t bear to be without her.” Alex looks to him with a surprise that Richard himself feels—they hadn’t discussed it, but it still feels right. More than that, they’re both aware that it’s the first time that he’s ever called the house that had been his father’s _his_. For too long Richard had let Howard and his poison color the house and his life. Alex Reagan is going to be his wife. It’s time to stop letting that happen. 

Before Alex says anything else, she just reaches over and wraps her fingers around his, and Richard can see the sapphire gleaming on her ring, winking like a promise. “Yes,” she just says firmly, giving Richard the smile that he loves so. “I’m moving in. I can’t bear to be without him either.”

For the first time in far too long, Richard Strand feels that the world is finally right.


	15. Epilogue: And all of my flaws are counted.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dreaded ICE interview involving Richard Strand and Alex Reagan goes about as well as you could have expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end of this ride. This is the longest fic that I've written in the shortest time, with it going from start to finish in less than a month. I one hundred percent wouldn't have been able to do that if it wasn't for all of the support that you guys have given to this story from the start, so I thank you for that. Seriously.

As it always does for Alex Reagan, the weekend ends far too quickly. Granted, normally it’s because she’s been working at home or at Richard’s house with the promise of eventually sleeping or taking it easy that never really comes. When they’re sitting in the immigration waiting room on Tuesday morning, Alex feels exhausted for an entirely new set of reasons. Richard’s holding her hand tightly, maybe a little too tightly but that is the only sign of nerves that are betrayed through the steel armor of Dr. Strand. Alex herself has no such armor, her leg is bouncing and her other hand is just gripping and ungripping the file of paperwork that she’s holding onto. 

“Alex,” Richard’s voice is low from her side and she just looks to him quickly as he raises their combined hands to his lips and he presses a gentle kiss to the back of hers. This, all of it still feels like some sort of dream really. It’s not something that she’d ever imagined, but it’s also something that feels more right than anything. Honestly, she’s just so thankful that she trusted her gut enough to call him eleven times. “Whatever happens in there, whatever comes of all of this, you have me. I am yours, yes? For better or for worse.”

“Yes,” Alex agrees, giving him the best smile that she can manage even if it’s a weak one. The two of them have already been through better and worse, and they don’t need to have actually spoken the words in a ceremony yet. (But let’s be honest, it’s them and of course they’re going to write their vows anyway. Screw the official ones, Alex had said in the car on the way here. They’re them. They’re going to get married their way.) “I’m yours too,” she adds quickly. “And that sure the hell isn’t going to change no matter what the government decides.”

Whatever luck the two of them may have had over the weekend has run out it seems, because it’s at that moment that the tall interviewer steps into the waiting room and just looks at them with harshness in his face. “Well, I’ll be the judge of that, Ms. Reagan.” Alex keeps her smile neutral and Richard unhelpfully gives the man a glare. _God_, she hopes. _Please don’t let this turn into a situation where I need to worry about Richard getting punched. Again_. 

“Thank you for agreeing to see us, Mr. Willis. I realize that this is probably a bit unorthodox and I know it probably seems suspicious ...” Alex Reagan is using her best reporter voice as she lets go of Richard’s hand and rises to her feet, offering her other hand to the tall man with the severe look on his face. He doesn’t take it, but he does not at her and Richard in turn before he leads them into the small and cramped office that she expected from dealing with ICE last time. 

Taking a seat, Alex just shares a look with Richard at the size of the file that bears her name and is open on the man’s desk. If there’s one thing that Alex knows it’s an investigative dossier and this has that written all over it. Inwardly, Alex just sighs because she knows that this has gotten much more difficult than she’d expected. Richard seems to share that realization, judging from the way he has braced himself into steel wrapped in a bespoke suit and a blue silk tie. 

Mr. Willis doesn’t speak again until he undoes the button of his suit and sits across from them. Compared to Richard, the man’s suit looks cheap and ill-fitting and Alex is well aware of the man’s pettiness as if it’s written on his face. Which it is to some small extent, but she can tell how much deeper it goes. Okay, this may be harder than she thought. But even with that realization, what Willis says next takes her back. “You should be aware, Ms. Reagan” he says her name like it’s bitter in his mouth and Alex can see Richard tense next to her, so she forces herself to keep calm. “That we have had an allegation that you and Dr. Strand are faking this relationship so that you may continue to illegally live in the U.S. so that you may keep working on your story.”

“Let me guess,” comes Richard’s sharp and snide snarl next to her, “the accusations of fraud are coming from Thomas Warren or someone else at Daeva Corp.”

The man doesn’t answer but from the way his eyes flicker down to his desk, Alex knows that they’re right about that. “It is not the policy of this organization to comment on where accusations of fraud come from.”

“Thomas Warren—“ Richard starts quickly and with equal sharpness before Alex puts a restraining hand on his arm. 

“Thomas Warren is a person of interest in my investigation, yes.” Years of training as a professional journalist gives Alex’s voice a calm that Richard can’t match in the face of the adversary’s name, and she can feel him cross his arms and glare at the interviewer in the same way that he always does when Warren’s name comes up. “But beyond that, he’s threatened both myself and Richard more than once over the course of the story, the last being a week ago. If there’s tainted information that you’ve received, I don’t see how it can be relevant to this investigation. But that doesn’t matter. I love Richard Strand and he loves me. And we’re engaged to be married and have been for a while.”

Willis’ face shifts into a sneer. “You’ll need to forgive me, Ms. Reagan, if I find that hard to believe. Either way, it’s not as if your judgement has been particularly sound as of late. For the last two years, from what I gather.”

Alex pales, she can’t help it. “You’ve listened to the show?” 

“Given the paperwork filed by attorneys from both of you and from your employer it was clear to me that your podcast was going to figure large in your defense so I wasted the better part of my weekend listening to it.” There’s a sneer in his voice that sets Alex’s skin on edge, but despite what people think, she_ is_ a professional and thanks to the man next to her, she’s had more than a little bit of experience with difficult interview subjects. So, she’s going to look at him as one. 

While Alex has made that decision, it’s quite clear that Richard hasn’t from the bite in his tone when he jumps into the conversation. “Whatever your opinions about the show aside,” well, that’s not dismissive at all, Alex can’t help but to think. “When Alex was making those poor decisions as you say, she was dealing with both severe sleep deprivation as well as what is likely an undiagnosed case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming from her discovery of the body of the housekeeper.”

“A body that Ms. Reagan discovered during the recorded commission of a felony, against the advice of her associate Mr. Silver.”

“A felony which the police never charged me with,” Alex interrupts quickly. “And that they never even considered charging me with considering the extenuating circumstances surrounding the case. They actually thanked me for discovering the scene.”

“Be that as it may,” Willis counters quickly, “it’s still a violation concerning your agreement that allowed you to stay in the United States, Ms. Reagan. As was your trip to Turkey.”

“I am aware of that. But I believe that my trip to Turkey should fall under the provision of something that was an intrical part of my job and the investigation that I’ve been working on for three years. The source in question was unable to come to me, so I went to him. It should also count under the first amendment as part of freedom of the press. My immigration status shouldn’t have trumped that.”

“Your ‘source,’” Alex can most definitely hear the scare quotes in the man’s voice, “is an escaped mass murderer who is currently wanted by this government. Not only for the crimes that he’d admitted to on your podcast but as a person of interest in other murders that he’d alluded to committing including the one of Maddie Franks, the body that you discovered. I don’t think that you can make a good faith claim there!”

“Just because you don’t think it,” Richard counters snidely “doesn’t mean it isn’t an acceptable reason For Alex’s trip. In fact I believe it falls beyond the purview of your authority in this situation. Our being here today is for you to assess whether or not our relationship is fraudulent in nature which it is not. So perhaps you should keep to the scope of your own investigation and leave the rest to the others.” Alex is both pleased that Richard defended her (again. She still remembers when he did it with Chief Colins in Los Gatos. It was the first time that he had, and it had made Alex feel warm inside even if she didn’t particularly need defending at that point.) and it frustrates her because Alex knows that this bureaucratic blowhard is going to take it out on them. 

Indeed, Alex can see color fusing Willis’ face and the vein in his temple has started pulsing in a worrisome manner. Despite knowing that she should be prepared for his ire, Alex is still taken back by the first question that he starts with. “Very well. Ms. Reagan have you had sex with Dr. Strand.”

Coloring herself and putting a restraining hand on Richard’s arm, she just responds. “Yes of course, many times.” It’s not a lie over the course of the last few days. 

“Good. Then you won’t have a problem describing his genitals. In detail.”

The sound of protest from Richard is cut off by Alex’s response and for the next forty-one minutes and twenty-six seconds the questioning doesn’t get any easier and both she and Richard are crimson and frustrated by the end of it. Still when he closes the file, Alex breathes out a sound of relief and makes a mental note to apologize to Richard when this is over and they’re outside. But Willis’ next statement catches them off guard. “I look forward to attending the wedding.”

“The wedding?” Alex can’t help but to echo dismally. And Richard mirrors her words and tone a second later. 

“The wedding.” The words are smug. “You didn’t think this was the end of it, did you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and reviews give me life!


End file.
